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4 16 2 


MODERN 
RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


THE 
DESTRUCTIVENESS AND IRRATIONALITY 
OF MODERNIST THEOLOGY 


BY 
JOHN HORSCH 
Author of “A Short History of Christianity,” “Menno Si- 
mons, His Life, Labors, and Teachings,” Etc. 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
JAMES M. GRAY, D. D. 
PRESIDENT OF THE Moopy BisLe INSTITUTE, CHICAGO 


SEcoND EDITION 


CHICAGO 
THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE ASS’N 
826 NortH La SALLE STREET 


Copyright, 1920, 1921, 1924, by Joun Horscu 


INTRODUCTION 


The Christian Century, a leading exponent of mod- 
ernism, says (January 3, 1924): “Christianity according 
to fundamentalism is one religion and Christianity accord- 
ing to modernism is another.” “There is a clash here as 
profound and grim as between Christianity and Confucian- 
ism. The God of the fundamentalist is one God, and the 
God of. the modernist is another.” ‘Which is the true 
Christian religion is the question to be settled by our 
genere:.on for future generations.” 

This witness is true, and for that reason it is impera- 
tive that young ministers, missionaries, Sunday school 
teachers, Christian workers generally and especially Chris- 
tian parents should be provided with the facts in the case 
and not rhetoric. When our sister republic was endeavor- 
ing to put down the political rebellion that threatened its 
life, it asked the United States for ammunition only. It 
had men and money, but needed that which the men 
could use and the money could buy. John Horsch’s book, 
Modern Religious Liberalism, meets that need in our pres- 
ent spiritual conflict. It furnishes facts. It gives the 
names of the men in this country who are leading the re- 
bellion against Bible Christianity. It locates the colleges 
and theological seminaries they represent. It quotes their 
utterances as to the Bible, God, Christ, man, sin, salvation, 
the future life, and incidentally divine and human govern- 
ment. It tells you where these utterances are found, gives 


you title, chapter and page where you can read them in 
their context. It is fair, clear, scholarly and bold. It is 
used as a text-book in the Pastors Course of the Moody 
Bible Institute, and no soldier in the ranks of the evan- 
gelical host today can afford to be ignorant of its contents. — 


James M. Gray. 


FOREWORD 


The present book was born of the conviction that the 
modern religious liberalism means the abandonment of the 
Christian faith. Modernist theology discredits and de- 
stroys the foundations of Christianity as Christianity has 
been known in all ages from the time of its origin. At 
the same time it discards the true basis for morality. 
Therefore modernism is the great menace to the Chris- 
tian Church and to society and the state, though it 
comes under a religious cloak professing to be a needed 
improvement on the old faith, and claiming to be called 
to save the Church from threatening shipwreck. By 
means of counterfeiting and camouflage it has gained ac- 
cess into not a few professedly orthodox pulpits and 
churches. In some instances the citadel has been sur- 
rendered without a struggle. Many a theological student 
has been deceived by the orthodox appearance of the 
more moderate type of modernist theology. Obviously 
there is need for literature exposing the great menace to 
the faith in a way that “he who runneth may read” and be 
enabled to recognize modernism when he meets it. 

My aim has been to set forth in plain language the 
true character, the destructive nature and unreasonableness 
of the modern religious liberalism in contrast with the 
evangelical faith, and the imperative need of an attitude of 
strict non-compromise. I have endeavored, as much as 


6 FOREWORD 


possible, to let the representatives of liberalism speak for 
themselves, and have cited a few defenders of evangelical 
orthodoxy. The conflict is one between two irreconcilable . 
religious positions and in such matters it is unquestionably 
necessary to “call a spade a spade,” yet it has been my 
aim “to speak the truth in love.” For setting forth the 
religious position of modernist authors and institutions I 
have no apology to offer. If one who is halting between 
two opinions on these most important questions may find 
this book a help in making an unreserved decision for the 
authenticity of God’s Word, I shall feel that the book has 
been worth while. 


J. H. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I A Reticious REVOLUTION 9 
II THe INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE 
SCRIPTURES 18 
III CuHrisTIAN EXPERIENCE 34 
IV Rericious CERTAINTY CONSIDERED FROM THE 
PoInt oF View oF MoDERNISM 43 
V PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 49 
VI Tue Fatuers oF LIBERALISTIC THEOLOGY 58 


VII Tue Mopern Doctrine oF DIVINE IMMANENCE 62 


VIII Tue BrsricaLt versus THE MODERN VIEW OF 


PRAYER 75 
IX Tue Deity or CHRIST VERSUS THE MODERN 
DocTRINE OF THE DiIvINIty OF MAN 80 
X SIn AND SALVATION 89 
XI Two Tyres or MopERN THEOLOGY 
COMPARED 100 
XII THe Eruicat INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION— 
THE LIBERALISTIC MORALITY 113 
XIJTI Tue Soctat GosPeEt 127 
XIV Rericious DEMocrAcy, THE DENIAL OF Gop’s 
SOVEREIGNTY 140 


XV THe New VIeEw oF REticious EDUCATION 158 


8 


CHAPTER 


XVI 
XVII 


XVIII 
XIX 


XX 
XXI 
XXII 
XXITT 


XXIV 


XXV 


XXVI 


XXVII 
XXVIII 


CONTENTS 


THE MODERNIST VIEW OF MISSIONS 
MopErN RELIGIous UNIONISM’ 


CuHurRCH DISCIPLINE VERSUS PERSECUTION 


HIstTor1IcAL FALSEHOODS—CONTRASTS BE- 
TWEEN FREEDOM AND ANARCHY 


IMMORTALITY 
SCIENCE 
EvoLUTIONISM 


Wuat Arts Our COLLEGES AND SEM- 
INARIES? 


THE IMMORALITY OF THEOLOGICAL COUN- | 


TERFEITING 


MopERN THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
Wor.LpD WAR | 


THE INEFFICIENCY OF RELIGIOUS LIBER- 
ALISM 


THE FAILURE OF UNITARIANISM 


THE CHASM BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE 
New THEOLOGY 


INDEX 


PAGE 
169 
184 


191 


198 
zie 
216 
223 


230 


255 


315 


MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM — 


I 


A RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION 


himself a name among unbelievers by publicly 

denouncing the Christian faith. He considered 
himself an infidel and was recognized as such by the world 
at large. The idea that he was a Christian would have been 
absurd to him as well as to his contemporaries. 

Now a number of liberalistic theological writers 
have come forward with the assertion that Robert G. 
Ingersoll, since he advocated moral betterment and re- 
form, was mistaken in his own opinion of himself as 
concerns his religious position and his relationship to 
Christianity. Among those who have expressed them- — 
selves on this point is Dean Shailer Mathews, of the 
theological department of the University of Chicago, | 
who remarks in a magazine article that the times are 
past when a man like Ingersoll can be regarded as a 
veritable anti-Christ.1 President Faunce of Brown Uni- 
versity, in an article on Religious Advance in Fifty 
Years, says, the attacks of Robert Ingersoll “which 
made our fathers shiver and quake” would today be 
out of date and have no such effect; “Ingersoll now 
seems like a crusader against windmills.”? The figure 
is taken, as will be readily recognized, from Don Quix- 
ote, who fought an imaginary foe which at daybreak 


A BOUT a generation ago Robert G. Ingersoll made 


1 The Constructive Quarterly. A Journal of the Faith, Work 
and Thought of Christendom. March, 1913, p. 106. 


2 The American Journal of Theology. Edited by the Divinity 
Faculty of the University of Chicago. 1916, p. 338. 


10 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


turned out to be nothing but harmless windmills. This 
author evidently believes that the orthodox teachings 
which Ingersoll attacked have had their day; to fight 
them now is like making war on windmills. While this 
is an extravagant opinion, since the liberalistic theolog- 
ical views are by no means so generally accepted as this 
author intimates, the fact remains that to representa- 
tives of religious liberalism the attack on the old Bible 
faith seems like a war on windmills—so radically does 
the new theology differ from the old theology which 
Ingersoll attacked. 

The modern theological liberalism takes the position © 
that no one can be considered an unbeliever, or non- 
Christian, because of his rejection of Christian doctrine. 
‘No man ever lived who really disbelieved in the Chris- 
tian religion,’ says Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis. “Infidel 
to Christianity? You might as well say that a man 
does not believe in roses or lilies, or is infidel toward 
wheat and milk, and abhors apples and oranges, grapes 
and honey. The very. thought is absurd and self-con- 
tradictory.”* In other words, there are, according to 
this writer, no unbelievers.’ The fact is that men who 
advocate such views on Christian doctrine as did Rob- 
ert G. Ingersoll are now often considered Christians 
and are welcomed into the modern church. Indeed such 
men are holding professorships in theological semina- 
ties; to them is entrusted the training and education 
of the coming ministers of the Gospel. It should be 
added that religious liberalists claim also to have dis- 
covered that there are no heathen. Clearly these things 
are the consequence of a religious revolution. 

The fact that modernism is the result of a religious _ 
revolution is freely admitted by liberalistic writers.. A 
few of them are here quoted. Dr. Lyman Abbott, the 


3 The Religious Digest, April, 1919. 





“NOTHING IN COMMON WITH ORTHODOXY” 1] 


well known liberalistic leader, says, “The old orthodoxy 
is right in regarding the New [Bible] Criticism as rev- 
ojutionary.’”* “The philosophy of religion has within 
the last generation undergone a revolution,” says Pro- 
fessor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Harvard University.® 
Professor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of 
Chicago, speaks of “the present revolt against doctrinal 
theology.’® Concerning Dr. Ames’ book, The New Or- 
thodoxy, a Unitarian periodical, says, it advocates re- 
ligious conceptions which differ in no wise from those 
of the Unitarians, and “the new orthodoxy has certainly 
nothmg m common with what was formerly cherished 
under that name.”’’ George Holley Gilbert, a defender 
of modernism, speaks of “the vast transformation which 
the Christian faith is surely and in part silently under- 
going.’”’§ 

Professor Errett Gates, of the University of Chica- 
go, says: “Christianity is now being compelled to re- 
shape its message and redefine its essence.’® “The very 
conception of religion, our interpretation of spiritual 
processes, and even our way of conceiving the Living 
God and His relationship to the world, is undergoing 
a radical transformation,’ writes Professor Herbert Alden 


4 The Theology of an Evolutionist, 1897, p. 61. In one of his 
more recent books Dr. Abbott has a chapter on A Religious Revolu- 
tion. 

5 The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, Chicago, 
1919, p. 84. 

6 The Biblical World. Edited by Shailer Mathews. July, 1917, 
p. 55. In the quotation to which this note refers, the words, re- 
volt against doctrinal theology are printed in type called Italics. In 
the original these words are not printed in such type. “Italics mine” 
means that Italics are used by the author of the present book, while 
in the original the words in question are not printed in Italics. 

7 The Christian Register. A Journal of Liberal Christianity, 
February 20, 1919, p. 183. The editor adds that “it is for holding 
precisely the views set forth in Professor Ames’ book that Uni- 
tarians have been denied the Christian name and fellowship.” 

8 The American Journal of Theology, 1910, p. 271. 


9 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, edited by 
Gerald Birney Smith, Chicago, 1916, p. 479. Italics mine. 


12 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Youtz, of the Oberlin Graduate School of Theology.’ 
The Unitarian theologian, Dr. George E. Ellis, in an 
address before the Unitarian Club of Boston, in 1882, 
said, “The Evangelical sects, so called, are clearly right 
in maintaining that their view of Scripture and its doc- 
trines draws a deep and wide division of creed between 
them and ourselves.’ Dr. James T. Shotwell, of Colgate 
University, says in his book, The Religious Revolution of 
Today: 


Our problem is not to prove the existence of religious rev- 
olution, for that is admitted by all who give the situation any 
thought, and is the starting point for almost any treatment of 
the place of religion in modern life... a change so funda- 
mental that it seems to imply the overturn of the whole trend 
of past philosophies.12—The brand of superstition is now being 
placed upon many of the most cherished beliefs of our fathers.12 


Dr. K. C. Anderson, pastor of a liberal church at Dun- 
dee, Scotland, writes: “Liberal Christianity is a radical 
departure from the creed of Christendom.” And again: 


It is well that we should be aware what a radical change is 
involved in the transfer from the orthodox to the liberal posi- 
tion.15—The important question is whether the Christian church 
can make the great change of belief which the acceptance of the 
modern critics’ Jesus would involve, and remain the Christian 
church. It is important that the churches of Christendom should 
realize the kind of Jesus the critics are presenting them with, and the 
vast revolution in belief which it involves18—The triumph of liberal- 
ism ts really a defeat, for it means the destruction of Christianity as 
Christianity has been known in al ages of its history 

A prominent modernist of Germany writes: 


We destroy much that was formerly accepted by Christian be- 
lievers. We deny the authority of the Scriptures; we see in 


10 eee ake Theology, Boston, 1919, p. 4. 

11 Dunning, A. E., Congregationalists in Ameren: 1894, p. 314. 
12 Page 6 f. 

13 The same, p. 1. 

14 The Hibbert ie" vol. 8, 314. 

15 The Monist, 1915, p. 46. 

16 The same, p. 55. 

17 The same, p. 57. Italics mine. 


“THE DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY” 13 


Scripture both truth and error. It goes without saying that we 
do not consider ourselves under duty to abide by the teaching of 
Scripture. We do not believe the miracles which are recorded in 
Scripture, nay, we positively deny them. All stories of miracles 
contained in Scripture we believe to be either fables or allegories. 

We do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God; we do not believe 
he was God-man; we do not believe he was a perfect man; we 
do not believe he was free from every error, from every sin. Nei- 
ther his sayings nor his life are to us authoritative in every re- 
spect. He is to us a great prophet, like many others. 

' Dr. John H. Boyd, having accepted a call to a pro- 
fessorship in the McCormick Theological Seminary, 
said in his farewell sermon to his people in Portland, 
“regon: 

I have not pleaded with you to believe in God. I have not 
asked you to bring your sins to be forgiven, primarily. I have 
not asked you to believe in the realities of the spiritual world. I 
have asked you to believe in yourselves, in the dignity of men, in 
the greatness of the human soul. I have asked you to believe in 
worthy character, in the worthiness of unselfish purity and manli- 
ness. I have believed that if you accept the teachings of Jesus Christ 
and become conscious of your own possibilities, you would grow out 
and for yourselves find God and spiritual realities. Those who 
can see the infinite reach of themselves can see God, can strength- 
en themselves, and the spiritual world is open to them. Men are 
what they are because of a fatal disbelief in their own divinity.13 / 


Are not such sentiments, expressed by a pastor of an 
evangelical church, evidence of religious revolution? 


President Cyrus Northrup, of the University of Min- 
nesota, Says: 


It seems to me that, in looking at the state of thought in the 
[liberalized] church in reference to its own faith, we are con- 
fronted by four marked changes which have grown into prom- 
inence in the last few years. These changes stated briefly are: 
First, a decay of belief in the supernatural. Second, what we may 
call the disintegration [the acceptance of the modern views] of 
the Bible. Third, new views respecting inspiration [denying the 
vital differences between the Scriptures and other literature]. 


18 The Christian Register, (official organ of the Unitarian 
Church), December 11, 1919, p. 3. 


14 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Fourth, loss of the sense of accountability [the breaking down of 
moral standards and responsibility]. These four changes are essen- 
tially one. They are shoots from a common root—and that root is _ 
doubt as to whether God ever has had any communication with men. | 
Under this doubt Christianity ceases to be the religion which God 
intended for men to cherish and becomes simply one of the religions 
of the world—a purely human device, like Confucianism or Moham- 
medanism; of no more authority than these and to be preferred to 
these only as its teachings are more reasonable and uplifting. 


This is a correct statement of the views disseminated by 
most of our leading theological seminaries. 


President Arthur Cushman McGiffert, of the Union 
Theological Seminary, New York, says: “Whether we 
lixe it or not, this [namely the new theology views of 
the nature of the Christian religion and of conversion] 
is working a revolution in modern thought, and the 
end is not yet.’° Furthermore Dr. McGiffert points 
out that the doctrine of divine immanence, which is 
now generally accepted among liberals, ascribes divini- 
ty to man, since it is supposed that man’s nature is one 
with God’s and he needs simply to awake to that fact. 
“This means, of course, a revolution in the old concep- 
tion of salvation,” this author says further, “what a man 
1equires is not regeneration in the old sense, or a 
change of nature, but simply an awakening to what he 
reaily is.”*° Again this author says: 

We have learned, not to think of the Bible as the final and in- 
fallible authority and have come to see that there is no such author- 
ity and that we need none. The result has been a change of simply 
untold consequence. The conservatives who feared and opposed 
Biblical criticism in its early days because they saw what a revolu- 
tion it portended were far more clearsighted than most of the 


liberals who thought that it meant simply a shifting of position.21 
—The chasm is deep. What is before us no one knows.22 


19 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, KYA 
20 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious PEE: p. 206. 


21 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 326. Italics 
mine. 


22 The same, p. 332. 


TWO IRRECONCILABLE POSITIONS 15 


One of the most noted defenders of religious liber- 
alism, the late Professor George Burman Foster, of the 
University of Chicago, said: 


The sum of what I have just been urging amounts to the pro- 
foundest change of [religious] thought known to history.282—One 
may say that not supernatural regeneration, but natural growth; 
not divine sanctification, but human education; not supernatural 
grace, but natural morality; not the divine expiation of the cross, 
but the human heroism—or accident ?—of the cross; ....not Christ 
the Lord, but the man Jesus who was a child of his time; not God 
and His providence, but evolution and its process without an ab- 
solute goal—that all this, and such as this, is the new turn in the 
affairs of religion at the tick of the clock.?4 


A representative of evangelical Christianity writes 
in The Moravian: 


It is every day becoming more apparent that in our churches 
two irreconcilable theological drifts are forcing themselves on our 
attention. The one we might call the conservative or positive or 
evangelical position. The other we might call the liberal or specu- 
lative or higher-critical position. In the final analysis of these two 
positions the former insists on a supernatural basis for the Chris- 
tian religion, while the latter denies the supernatural and substi- 
tutes a purely natural basis. 

The former position has in our day found its clearest expres- 
sion through the Bible Institutes and training schools, through 
evangelistic and missionary activity; the latter through Unitarian- 
ism, and so-called higher criticism in many of our theological sem- 
inaries and liberal pulpits. Thinking people are discovering, even 
if rather slowly, that these two positions can never be reconciled. 
They have been, are, and will always be, fundamentally at war with 
each other, and we might just as well save our precious breath 
crying “Peace! Peace!” when there can be no peace. 


“Throughout all Protestantism,” says a recent writ- 
er, “especially in the colleges and theological training- 
schools, under the guise of ‘higher criticism’ and ‘liberal 
Christianity, there is being waged the most determined 


5 


23 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 
1909, p. 178. 
24 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 736. 


16 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


and far-reaching assault upon our holy Christianity that 
it has ever endured since apostolic times. The Chris- 
tian religion, ‘wounded in the house of its friends,’ must | 
yet the victory over these insidious but deadly foes.” 
Another writer says: 

It is no use attempting to minimize the difference between the 
traditional [orthodox] view and the critical treatment of the Old 
Testament. The differences are immense; they involve different 
conceptions of the relation of God to the world, different views as 
to the nature of inspiration, etc. We cannot be lifted from the old 
to the new position by the influence of a charming literary style or 
by the force of the most enthusiastic eloquence. 

It would indeed be useless to deny or belittle the 
radical contrasts between the old Bible faith and relig- 
ious liberalism. So great and fundamental are these 
differences that, if the one is Christianity, the other 
must be something else. It has been said that modern- 
ism has changed all the doctrines of the old faith as 
held by Christendom from the beginning. The fact is, 
as pointed out in preceding quotations, modernism sets 
aside these doctrines and disowns them. Indeed, Chris- | 
tianity has more in common with Judaism and some 
ether non-Christian religions than with modernism. 

Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of 
Chicago, a prominent liberalistic leader, editor of The 
Journal of Religion, shows in a review that in the well 
known book Christianity and Liberalism, by Professor 
J. Gresham Machen, it is claimed that modernism “is 
not Christianity at all,” and that “it is fundamentally 
different from Christianity.” Then Professor Smith makes 
this remarkable admission: “If this can be made out, the 
absurdity of permitting liberals to go on claiming the name 
of Christianity [and likewise claiming the right to remain in 
an evangelical church] is apparent.”*5 The fact is that this 
can indeed be made out. The outspokenly liberalistic editor 





25 The Journal of Religion, September, 1923, p. 542. 


THE GREATEST CONTRASTS 17 


of The Christian Century, says frankly that “Christianity 
according to fundamentalism is one religion and Christianity 
according to modernism another.” There can be no doubt 
but that other fair-minded modernists will admit the 
1ightfulness of Professor Machen’s claim that liberalism 
is fundamentally different from Christianity and is not 
Christianity at all. In fact, the most advanced modern- 
ists assert that the Gospels are unreliable and we do 
not know what Christ taught or what Christianity re- 
ally is. That the difference between modernism and his- 
torical Christianity is chasm-deep no serious thinker 
will deny. All this means, in the language of Professor 
Smith, that it is an absurdity to say that modernism is 
Christianity. 

Much as the renunciation of the old faith, on the 
part of modernists, is to be regretted, the most offens- 
ive feature of religious liberalism is that it uses, as 
a rule, the old Biblical expressions and claims to be 
Christian theology—an improvement on the old faith; 
—all this in the face of the fact that modernists, as we 
have seen, recognize the great chasm which separates 
them from Biblical Christianity. It is as if within a 
political party which was founded on the principle of a 
protective tariff there arose a new party which defended 
iree trade, but insisted on retaining the old party name 
and connections, advancing the excuse that the pro- 
tective tariff principles, when properly interpreted, 
mean free trade. 


IT 


THE INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE 
HOLY SCRIPTURES 


the Scriptures is taught in the Bible and is the only 
doctrine of Biblical inspiration that is consistent with 
the claims and contents of the Bible message. Its prac- 
tical meaning is that the Bible is infallible. This doc- — 
trine must not be confounded with the mechanical or 
dictation theory which implies the suppression of the - 
human element altogether. Though mechanical inspira- 
tion is not claimed for the Scriptures, it is necessary to 
emphasize the fact that, whether the holy writers com- 
initted to writing a direct message from God. (as did in 
many instances Moses and the prophets), or whether 
they stated truth as they, by divine illumination, saw it, 
or recorded what they themselves had witnessed, or 
other facts of history, they were in every instance mov- 
ed by the Holy Ghost to such extent that their writings 
are not subject to error. This implies the principle of 
verbal inspiration. The Holy Spirit guided them in the 
choice of words to the end that the truth was expressed 
and error avoided. The original manuscripts of the 
Scriptures were in this sense verbally inspired. 
Inspiration, then, must be distinguished from illum- 
ination. True, the holy writers were enlightened by the 
Holy Spirit, but illumination alone would not have en- 
abled them to write the infallible Word of God. Nei- 
ther can verbal inspiration be sufficiently accounted for 
on the ground that the writers were holy men. Many 
other Christian writers were true saints of the Lord. 


Toe doctrine of the plenary, or verbal, inspiration of 


VERBAL INSPIRATION 19 


Again, it is immaterial whether all the holy writers 
knew at the time of their writing that the Holy Spirit 
was guiding them to the extent that they wrote inerr- 
antly. Nor can it be supposed that these writers had 
the ability to write infallibly at all times. All this 
means that the holy writers were, while they wrote the 
Scriptures, in a very special sense the tools of the Holy 
Spirit. The Bible is the result of the supernatural 
working of God. It is the Word of God. The old 
proof-text method of using Scripture is the method of 
Christ and the apostles. It is the only method consist- 
ent with Scripture teaching as to the nature of the 
Scriptures. 

The various older manuscripts of the Bible which 
are now in existence have numerous variations of the 
text, arising from the fact that copyists hardly ever do 
perfect work. These variations, or various readings, 
are not of such importance as some of the liberalistic 
writers would have us believe. The: comparative study 
of the manuscripts by competent scholars has given us 
a reliable Greek and Hebrew text, and our English ver- 
sions have been brought to a remarkable perfection. It 
is certain beyond a doubt that if we had the original 
writings, it would make no appreciable difference in the 
teachings of the Bible. 

In recent times the opinion has been advanced that 
the inspiration of Scripture has to do merely with the 
thought of Scripture. It is supposed that the writers 
of the books of the Bible wrote the thoughts, or the 
messages, that were given them of God but were not 
under the special guidance of God. Yet unless these 
writers were led by God in the choice of their words to 
the extent that they wrote inerrantly, we should have 
in Scripture not the infallible revelation of God but a 
mere record of revelation—a record which would be hu- 
man and therefore imperfect in character. “If inspira- 


20 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


tion does not render the holy pete at: infallible, their 
nature is no longer divine but human,” says Professor 
George Johnson.* 

There are at the present time ESTATE who Shah 
shift the authority from the infallible Bible to the in- 
fallible Christ. They are of the opinion that it matters 
little whether or no the Bible is inerrant so long as we 
have Christ and His word to build upon, just as we 
have the word of Plato or other great men of antiquity. 
But the words of Plato cannot be compared with 
Christ’s words on point of importance. Plato did not 
bring to men a supernatural revelation; his writings 
must be judged entirely by human standards. Christ, 
on the other hand, taught truths that come to us as di- 
vine revelation. Some. of these truths cannot be veri- 
fied by experience or human knowledge. The fact that 
Christ was infallible would not give us an infallible di- 
vine authority if we had not the inerrant statement or 
record of His words and acts. What would Christ’s in- 
fallibility benefit us if the record which we have of Him 
be unreliable? It is inconceivable—is it not?—-that God 
would accomplish the great work of the redemption of 
mankind and reveal to fallen man the true way of sal- 
vation, and then leave us with a fallible account of it 
all—an unreliable record such as modernists believe the 
Scriptures to be. 

There are, then, theologians who hold the opinion 
that the Scriptures are not infallible, though they con- 
sider the words of Christ and certain other parts of the 
Bible acceptable. Now from this position there is but 
a step to the radically liberalistic view: that, since the 
Scriptures are not unerring, the account of Christ’s su- 
pernatural character, His birth, His miracles, etc., is 
unacceptable. This means the rejection of the Biblical 
account of the life of our Lord, and the acceptance of 


1 The Princeton Theological Review, 1914, p. 461. 


AN INFALLIBLE RECORD 21 


the view that we know nothing reliable about His life. 
Again, he who adopts such views will find that, to be 
consistent, he cannot hold the record of Christ’s words 
to be more trustworthy than the record of His miracu- 
lous works. It is idle to make an attempt to defend the 
one while disowning the other. Indeed Christ’s own 
words have largely reference to that which is super- 
natural and miraculous. 

One of the radical critics, Professor Karl Bornhaus- 
en, of Marburg, points out that soon after the doctrine 
of inspiration had been discarded, the Bible record of 
Jesus’ life and miraculous deeds was judged unaccepta- 
ble, and “close upon this supposition followed the criti- 
cism of the words of Jesus.”? Another liberalistic writ- 
er says rightfully, if the Bible is not held to be inerrant, 
“the teachings of Jesus which are recorded in the Bi- 
ble cannot be considered as an absolute rule of truth.”® 
The same writer (who is a minister in an evangelical 
denomination) says further: “My ultimate standard is 
not Christ—neither the Christ of history nor the Christ 
of faith; J want to know God. I want him to be my 
Seandard of perfection. — The standard cannot be 
creeds and dogmas, the Bible or any particular part of 
it, or the Master and His teachings.’* Thus the rejec- 
tion of the Bible as an inerrant authority leads to the 
rejection of the authority of Christ. The last mention- 
ed author would retain the authority of God but neg- 
lects to tell us what he means when he refers to God. 
Clearly he does not speak of God as revealed in Scrip- 
ture. He fails to inform us how God can be his “stan- 
dard of perfection,” if we do not have an authoritative 
revelation of God. , 

The term higher criticism was formerly used in an 


2 The American Journal of Theology, 1914, p. 201. 
8 The Biblical World, March, 1919, p. 150. 
4 The same, p. 155. 


22 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


acceptable sense. It meant an examination of the text 
of the Bible with a view of settling the date, human. 
authorship, purpose, etc., of its component parts. In 
the modern liberalistic sense higher criticism means the 
study of the Scriptures from the viewpoint of natural- 
ism. The leading principle is the denial of the super- 
natural character of divine revelation in Scripture. The 
supernatural is explained away on the assumption that 
it is due to mistaken ideas of the writers of the Biblical 
books. Modern higher criticism is also called the his- 
torical method of Biblical interpretation, or the histo- 
rical treatment of religion, since it undertakes the study 
of the Scriptures from the purely human historical 
viewpoint insisting that the history of Christ and of 
those who, according to Bible teaching, were used of 
God for special purposes, was not different in character 
from other human history. The critics take the posi- 
tion that ail that cannot be explained by human stand- 
ards of knowledge is unacceptable. All questions per- 
taining to Bible study are approached on the basis of 
naturalism and rationalism. In short, the modern high- 
er criticism is based on the denial of the divine charac- 
ter and authority of the Scriptures, 

Another term which has acquired a new meaning in 
liberalistic usage is “the inductive method of the study 
of Scripture,” as contrasted with the deductive method. 
The latter method accepts the Scriptures as God’s 
Word and, agreeable with this truth, makes its deduc- 
tions and conclusions. The modern inductive method, 
on the other hand, starts with the presumption that the 
Scriptures are not God’s Word in any real sense, hence 
no conclusions must be made as if the whole Bible were — 
divinely inspired; nothing must be approved on the 
mere authority of Scripture. The inductive method of 
Bible study undertakes to study Scripture, part for part, 
with a view of determining whether the part in question 


THE INDUCTIVE METHOD 23 


is in any sense inspired and acceptable. The Bible is 
not looked upon as man’s judge, but man is supposed 
to be the judge of the Bible. It is readily seen that this 
method of study is merely another term for modern 
higher criticism. 

Modernists tell us, as already intimated, that of the 
contents of Scripture only that which has to do directly 
with the religious life of man was given of God to the 
Biblical writers. This means that inspiration, even in 
this loose sense, would not apply to Scripture narration 
of historical events and hence not to the record of mir- 
acles. If this were the correct view you might believe 
in the inspiration of Scripture and yet question the mir- 
acles. They who hold such views deny the vital im- 
portance of Scripture narration. They ignore the fact 
that the truth of Christianity depends on certain his- 
torical facts, such as the life, death, and resurrection of 
Christ. Nevertheless many of those who take such an 
attitude would retain some of the moral and religious 
teaching of the Bible, 

Again if such theologians are asked how they sup- 
pose that God revealed religious thoughts to the holy 
writers, they answer, as a rule, that these thoughts 
came to them through their religious experience. In 
other words, they see in the Bible (or in parts of it) 
nothing more than a record of the religious experience 
of certain men, or, more correctly speaking, a more or 
less questionable record of what they thought they had 
experienced. ‘We are becoming accustomed to the use 
of the Bible as a book of religious experience,” says 
Professor Gerald Birney Smith, “rather than a super- 
naturally produced literature.” Now the term “relig- 
ious experience” is an impressive one, but, as will be 
pointed out elsewhere, “religious experience” has been 
deprived of all real meaning by the representatives of 


5 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 553. 


24 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


liberalism. In the last analysis they hold that the Bible 
is merely “the outgrowth of men’s thinking,” just as 
all other religious books.® These liberalistic theologians — 
teach that the religious books of the Mohammedans 
and pagans, as well as modern religious writings, (being 
also in a sense a record of religious experience) are, as 
concerns authority, on a par with the Bible. They see 
in Scripture simply “man’s enlarging thought and dis- 
covery of God, not God’s progressive revelation of Him- 
self to man.” Nevertheless they profess to believe in 
the inspiration of Scripture. Now such a view of in- 
spiration cannot be taken seriously; it is a mere make- 
believe. Modern theology denies the personality of the 
Holy Spirit; the Spirit is “conceived as energy, or force © 
in operation; the force or energy which pervades the 
world,” says Professor H. C, Ackerman, of the Theo- 
logical Institute at Nashotah, Wis. Hence, this writer 
asserts that “in the field of religious [and Biblical] in- 
spiration the spirit is [not a personal Being, but] that 
stirring imterest in ideas and ideals of God and man 
which leads to the discovery and foundation of the most 
efficient religion.’ In other words, inspiration is not 
the work of the divine Spirit but of the spirit of man. 
It is readily seen that this doctrine of inspiration is 
mere word-jugglery. 

The leading modern critics, then, do not distinguish 
between divine inspiration, in the sense in which this 
term is used when we speak of the inspiration of Scrip- 
ture, and the various other uses of the word inspiration. 
They tell us that the Scriptures are inspired in a sim- 
ilar sense as some poem or some new idea may prove 
inspiring to us. In their opinion Shakespeare and Goe- 
the were inspired as well as the Biblical writers. Pro- 
fessor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of 


® The American Journal of T henry 1917, p. 355. 
7 The Biblical World, March 1919, p. 148. 


INSPIRATION—NOT OF DIVINE CHARACTER 25 


Chicago, for example, mentions quite a number of writ- 
ers: Tennyson and Whittier and Bryant and Lowell 
and Phillips Brooks and Shakespeare and Maeterlinck 
and Kepler and Darwin and John Locke and William 
James who, in his view, should be included in the sa- 
cred canon of Scripture. He thinks the canon of Scrip- 
ture has, by the critics, been “made continuous with 
the ampler Scriptures of the whole spiritual develop- 
ment of mankind.”’® “Modern religious thinking,” says 
Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, “is learning to draw its in- 
spiration from the world in which we live.’?® George 
Burman Foster has asserted that a Bible greater and 
richer than the Christian Bible has come into existence, 
namely the Bible of Humanity (whatever that may 
mean). “In this Bible of Humanity,” he says, “we too 
ought to write.”*? | And again he says, the new doubt— 
for which Professor Foster himself stood—flung down 
the gauntlet to the old Bible faith with the result that 
“the Sacred Book was found a human book.” There- 
fore the Bible “had no right to rule over man. Man 
was the book’s judge, the book was not man’s judge.”” 
All these writers are entertaining agnostic, non-Chris- 
tian views of the Bible. 

William Newton Clarke, the well-known advocate 
of the new theology, wrote: “The authority of the 
Scriptures is the authority of the truth that they con- 
vey.’** And again: “If Christianity were not historically 
true, no divine aid in the composition of its scriptures 
could make it true.”1* Hence this author, with many 
other writers, rejects the authority of Scripture, substi- 


8 The New Orthodoxy, p. 8&1. 
9 The same, p. 69. 
10 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 570. 
11 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 
. 292. 
eae A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 740 
13 An Outline of Christian Theology, p. 45 
14 The same, p. 38. 


26 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


tuting for it the authority of truth. He persistently ig- 
nores the fact that the most important truths which the. 
Bible brings to us, are dependent on the authority of 
the Scriptures as God’s Word and cannot be verified in 
any other way. Deny the authority of the Bible and 
you will find yourself compelled to take the position of 
an agnostic in regard to these truths. Furthermore, 
Christianity is, as already said, grounded on certain 
historical facts, such as Christ’s supernatural birth, the 
Atonement, the resurrection, etc. To maintain these 
facts when the authority of Scripture is rejected, is im- 
possible. The Scriptures, Christ the Savior, and Chris- 
tianity stand and fall together. Now all the liberal 
critics, William Newton Clarke included, tell us that the 
Bible contains much that is unacceptable historically. 
In fact they would make the Bible one of the most un- 
reliable books. And then again they have the courage 
to tell us that the question of the inspiration and au- 
thority of Scripture is of no importance. 


Such is the modern liberalistic view of the Bible. It 
has been said that this view makes the Bible a huge 
mistake. While this is true, it is not the whole truth. 
If the liberalistic view be correct, the Bible would be 
not merely a mistake but a fraud—a pious fraud, if you 
like. But suppose for the moment that the Bible be 
merely of equal value with Shakespeare and other use- 
ful books in general, the wonder is then, that some of 
our modern critics confess surprise over the fact that 
the practice of daily reading the Scriptures is generally 
discontinued in liberalistic circles. Do they not realize 
that, where their own views prevail, it is asking too 
much that this practice be kept up? Not long age a 
Unitarian writer said in The Christian Register: 


It is still a good home to be born into, this home of the liberal 
faith—good in many respects: but so far as responsibility for the 
religiousness of the children is concerned the parents have abdicated. 


IS THERE DESTRUCTIVE CRITICISM? fai 


Someone says that in the modern home the daily bath has taken 
the place of the morning prayer. It is better for hygiene—is it for 
holiness, for character? The modern liberal parent seems to reply, 
“Cleanliness comes before godliness and one will suffice.”—This 
sunset of religiousness is by no means confined to Unitarian homes 
nor to those of liberal orthodoxy. But it is probably most marked 
in homes of the liberal faith, and doubtless the liberalizing has 
much to do with it. 


William Newton Clarke has written a book in which 
he undertakes to show that as the supernatural and su- 
perhuman has faded out of his thought of the Bible 
and its contents, in the same degree the Bible has be- 
come inspiring to him. The more fully he recognized 
its (supposed) shortcomings, the more valuable he 
found the Bible to be and the more acceptable as a ve- 
hicle of the revelation of God. Similar assertions have 
been made by many liberalistic writers. The liberal 
critics have, in fact, generally defended this view. Says 
Gerald Birney Smith: “For the man of. scientific spirit 
criticism [even if it be of the most radically negative 
character] is never destructive,’® in other words, there 
is not such a thing as destructive criticism — the most 
radical of the higher critics are not doing destructive 
work. This view of the modern liberalists is only an 
evidence of their inability to consider these matters in 
an unbiased way. It is refreshing to notice that there 
are at least a few representatives of liberalism who are 
willing to admit that the modern higher criticism is de- 
structive to the value of the Scriptures. 

Wellhausen, the foremost radical Old Testament 
critic, when asked whether, if his views were accepted, 
the Bible would retain its place in the estimation of 
the people in general, said: “I cannot see how that is 
possible.” A Unitarian writer says: “Under the high- 
er criticism the religious value of the Bible tends to 
disappear.”'® Dr, M. J. Savage, pastor of a Unitarian 


15 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 187. 
16 The Christian Register, Dec. 26, 1918, p. 1236. 


28 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


church in Boston has admitted: “We are gradually 
drifting away from the idea that the Bible has any spe- 
cial significance or authority.”?7 Another Unitarian © 
writer says: “Materialistic science and Biblical criticism 
have brought multitudes to the brink of despair.”** “If 
the whole truth is to be told,’ says a Unitarian clergy- 
man in New York, “and that is what I am striving to 
do as far as limitations of space will permit, Unitarians 
outstrip all others in their ignorance of the Scriptures 
and in their inability to appreciate the permanent value 
of the sacred writings.’ “The danger of liberalism now 
is,’ this writer remarks further “that it will discard the 
Bible altogether. If it does, then liberalism, as we have 
it, will deserve only death and the world were better 
off without it.”2® Dr. A. C. Dixon is responsible for the 
statement that when the British and Foreign Bible So- 
ciety gave a copy of the Scriptures to each of the grad- 
uates of certain universities in India on the day of 
their graduation, a freethinker who desired to give 
them an antidote to the Bible, presented them with a 
book on the Bible written by a well-known liberal Brit- 
ish clergyman. : 

“When destructive criticism proclaimed to the world 
that its purpose was to save the Bible to mankind,” 
writes the editor of a religious journal, “it deceived it- 
self and all who held its presumptions. Where the 
modern Bible criticism has been accepted, it has robbed 
the people of the substance of Scripture and left them 
only the husks. Its effect everywhere is to unfit the 
people for receiving the Gospel.” The Herald and 
Presbyter says: “The most serious damage to the Word 
of God and the church from destructive critics is not’ 
in their attack upon individual facts of books of the 


17 Dunning, Congregationalists in America, 1894, p. 316. 
18 The Christian Register, January 8, 1920, p. 22. 
19 The same, August 26, 1920, p. 14. Italics mine. 


“INSPIRATION” MUST HAVE A MEANING Fa 


Bible, but in the loss of confidence in the Bible as a 
whole which their methods produce.””° 

William Newton Clarke was, as has been intimated, 
one of a class of theologians who lay claim to the pred- 
icate oi loyalty to the Scriptures, but explain that this 
does not mean loyalty to a theory about the Scriptures. 
They object to definite teaching regarding the divine 
character of Scripture. They do not hold to any doc- 
trine defining the sense in which they believe the Bible 
to be inspired, though, as a rule, they hold that the in- 
spiration of Scripture has not to do with the very 
words but only with the thoughts — or, speaking more 
correctly, with some of the thoughts—contained in 
Scripture. They take the position that no one has a 
right to insist on definitions concerning the character of 
Scripture, or, in other words, concerning the ground for 
and import of the loyalty which they demand. The 
case is similar to that of certain liberal theologians who 
profess loyalty to Christ, but insist that to consider His 
deity essential is to demand loyalty to a mere theory 
about Him. The fact is that, unless definitions are giv- 
en and we are permitted to know what a given state- 
ment about the Scriptures and about Christ really 
means, it is only the unthinking who can satisfy them- 
selves with such a position. It cannot for a moment 
be doubted that a weakening down on the doctrine of 
inspiration has a pronounced tendency of producing a 
modification in the acceptance of the message found in 
the Bible. The rejection of the doctrine of inspiration - 
goes together with a doctrine of salvation which differs 
from the Bible conception, 

Dr. Robert Forman Horton, a well-known British 
theologian, wrote :”? 

The real difficulty of our time, when we come to probe it, is the 


20 Quoted in The Bible Champion, 1915, p. 131. 
21 Contemporary Review, January, 1917, p. 54. 


he 


30 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


dethronement of the Bible from its position of unquestioned author- 
ity. From the earliest period of Christianity, even in the writings 
of the earliest Fathers, the sacred Scriptures were held to be the 
standard and the test of Christian truth: nothing was to be taught 
as essential except what was contained in them or could be proven 
by them; and up to the middle of the last century the imposing 
fortress of the Book remained practically unquestioned and cer- 
tainly unbreached. No one within the borders of the Church hesi- 
tated to regard the Bible as effectively infallible. A quotation from 
any part of it carried unquestioned weight, and decisions drawn 
from its decretals were the settlement of all strife—[Liberal] 
Protestants have lost their Bible, and in losing it have lost their 
religion. How can they shelter in a building which is demolished 
or which is ever hidden by the scaffolding about it, necessary for 
perpetual repairs? 

Charles Haddon Spurgeon has said: 

jhe turning point of the battle between those who hold “the 
faith once delivered to the saints” and their opponents, lies in the 
true and real inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. This is the Ther- 
mopylae of Christendom. If we have in the Word of God no in- 
fallible standard of truth, we are at sea without a compass, and no 
danger from rough weather without can be equal to this loss with- 
in. “If the foundations be removed, what can the righteous do?” 
And this is a foundation loss of the worst kind. ~* 

“Let us not deceive ourselves,” says Professor John 
Gresham Machen, of Princeton Theological Seminary, 
“the Bible is at the toundation of the church. Under- 
mine that foundation, and the church will fall. It will 
fall, and great will be the fall of it.’’?? 

There yet remains the question of the authority of 
the Old Testament and its relation to the New Testa- 
ment Scriptures. The writer of the epistle to the He- 
brews, having spoken of the Old Covenant, points out 
that Christ “is the Mediator of a better covenant.” 
“For if that first covenant had been faultless, then 
should no place have been sought for the second” 
(Heb. 8:6,7). While as concerns inspiration there is 
no difference between the Old and the New Testament 


22 The Princeton Theological Review, 1915, p. 351. 


OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT 31 


Scriptures, the Bible teaches explicitly that the New 
Covenant surpasses and supersedes the Old and that 
parts of the Old Testament precepts were intended for 
pre-Messianic times alone. 

The question in what respect the New Covenant 
surpasses the Old is answered in the same epistle. It 
is pointed out that the difference arises, principally, 
from the fact that Christ is the Son, while Moses was 
the servant (3:1-6). Again the writer or this epistle 
says: “For the law having a shadow of things to come, 
and not the very image [or substance] of the things, 
can never with those sacrifices which they offered year 
by year continually make the comers thereunto per- 
fect.— For it is not possible that the blood of bulls 
and of goats should take away sins” (Heb. 10:1, 4). 
Those sacrifices were shadows and types pointing to 
Christ and were fulfilled in Him. The blood of the 
typical sacrifices covered sin; the blood of Christ cleans- 
es from sin. In the Old Covenant the law was written 
on tables of stone; in the New it is written in the be- 
liever’s heart (Jer. 31:33; II Cor. 3:3). The nature of 
the Old Covenant law was partly conditioned by the 
people’s hardness of heart, as will be further shown. 
For the New Covenant the promise is, “I will take a- 
way the stony heart...and give you an heart of flesh” 
(Ezek. 36:26). Our Lord says, that he that is least 
in the kingdom of God is greater than His own fore- 
runner who was not a member of the New Covenant 
(Luke 7:28). In various instances He dwells upon the 
superiority of the New Covenant. He also points out 
differences between His own precepts and certain points 
of the Mosaic law. “The law was our schoolmaster to 
bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by 
faith” (Gal. 3:24). 

Again, some of the Ten Commandments have ac- 
quired a new meaning through the interpretation of the 


32 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


perfect Teacher. According to New Testament teach- 
ing hatred is a transgression of the commandment, 
“Thou shalt not kill” (commit murder). The com-_ 
mand, “Thou shalt not steal,’ according to Christ’s 
teaching, and in the light of Paul’s words, Rom. 1:14, 
means far more than it did under the Old Dispensation. 
God’s children, being saved by Him, are debtors to all 
men. The closer to God they live, the more they will 
realize their indebtedness. Unless they meet it accord- 
ing to their ability, they transgress the command, 
“Thou shalt not steal.” This is the Christian version 
of this commandment. 

In the Old Testament law were incorporated cer- 
tain precepts touching various usages which had been 
in vogue in Israel before the giving of the law. Some © 
of these usages were left to Israel because of “the 
hardness of their hearts” (Matt. 19:8; Mk. 10:1-12). 
The Lord Jesus said to the Jews: “Moses, because of 
the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away 
your wives.” The supposition that the permission of 
divorce in the Old Covenant did not have the divine 
sanction, is groundless. The regulations regarding this 
matter are a part of the inspired record. And this is 
not the only instance in which the hardness of heart of 
Israel was taken into account in God’s dealings with 
them. He had promised to drive out the Canaanites in 
a miraculous manner (Ex. 23:27-30; Deut. 7:20-22). 
They lacked the needed faith, however, hence it fell to 
them to use the sword. Aind not only did God permit 
them the use of the sword, but He gave them pertinent 
laws and precepts and promised them success in their 
wars. When later the people demanded a king “like all, 
the nations,” the Lord said unto Samuel: “Hearken unto 
the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: 
for they have not rejected thee but they have rejected 
me, that I should not reign over them” (I Sam. 8:7). 


THE SCRIPTURES AN INSEPARABLE WHOLE _ 33 


They had not lived in the faith and had not permitted 
God to lead them and be their ruler. They had reject- 
ed the Lord and, in consequence, conditions obtained 
which made the election of a king necessary. So the 
Lord Himself chose a king for them (I Sam, 10:24; 12: 
13). Indeed, through His foreknowledge of these 
things He had given them in the Mosaic law precepts 
concerning the rule of a king (Deut. 17:14-20). 

The question, Why did God not give Israel the law 
of the New Covenant instead of giving consideration, 
in some respects, to their hardness of heart—this ques- 
tion is identical with the query why the Redeemer was 
not given at the time of Moses, or earlier. While a 
number. of reasons may be given why God has made 
with Israel a covenant such as the Mosaic, giving them 
a law dealing with types and shadows as a special 
preparation for the coming of the Savior, the fact should 
be kept in mind that human opinion does not go far in 
such matters. Martin Luther’s answer to a similar 
question may be worth quoting. When asked “what 
God may have been doing in the long eternity before 
the creation of the world,” his reply was: He was sit- 
ting in a birch-grove and was cutting rods to chastise 
those who raise such useless questions. 

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are 
an inseparable whole. The Old Testament Scriptures 
are the foundation, the foreshadowing and promise of 
the New. The New Testasnent is the fulfillment of the 
Old. In so far as the precepts of the Old Testament 
were intended for pre-Messianic times alone, they are 
not applicable to the Christian church. But the fact 
remains and cannot be too strongly emphasized, that 
though God’s revelation in Scripture is of a progressive 
character, the whole Bible is God’s inspired Word. 


III 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 


say, their religious thought is founded on experi- 
ence. This, it must be admitted, is an impressive 
claim. Experience is a matter not to be trifled with, 
unless it has to do with trifling things. Obviously an 


RR sx tir stigions of modernism sometimes 


experience may be of great or little value, depending © 


entirely on its nature and content, that is to say, on the 
question what it is that has been experienced. When 
we are told that a religion is established on experience, 
we first of all ask for definitions. What do modernists 
mean when they speak of religion and religious experience? 

There is a host of liberal religionists in our day to 
whom religion is nothing more than a means to social 
welfare. The late Auguste Sabatier, Dean of the Prot- 
estant faculty of theology in the University of Paris, a 
notable leader of liberal religious thought, wrote a 
large volume in defence of what he speaks of as “the 
religion of the spirit.” And what would you suppose 
is his definition of the religion of the spirit which he 
advocated? It is, according to his own words, altruism. 
Professor Josiah Royce, of Harvard University, taught 
that Christianity is simply a sentiment of loyalty. Pro- 
fessor Edward Scribner Ames says,’ “Religion is an ex- 
traordinary enthusiasm for a cause.” Many writers 
have, as we shall see elsewhere, explained religion to 
be nothing beyond morality. Professor Roy Wood 
Sellars, of the University of Michigan, gives this defi- 
nition: “Religion is loyalty to the values of life.” This 
writer explains that any one who “throws himself 


1 The New Orthodoxy, p. 94. 


MODERNIST DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION = 35 


whole-heartedly into some field,” such as Socialism, art, 
etc., “has found that concrete and living salvation 
which ideal effort always brings to man. He is filled 
with the spirit of consuming loyalty to what he val- 
ues.’”? 

In the opinion of these writers religion is nothing 
more than endeavor for social welfare, altruism, moral- 
ity, loyalty, enthusiasm. Now it is true that experi- 
ence has proven the desirability of these things. Every 
person of sound mind, be he Christian, Jew, Moham- 
medan, pagan, rationalist, or what not, will admit that 
these qualities are to be desired; that they are better 
than their opposites. This is apparent to every one of 
commonsense. As far as we are aware we have no 
score with liberalism on this point. The point on 
which we differ is, that we do not recognize these qual- 
ities as the essence of Christianity. If faith in these 
things were the sum and substance of the Christian 
faith, it would follow that intelligent people the world 
over are, wittingly or unwittingly, representatives of 
the Christian religion. If Christian experience were 
nothing beyond the conviction that these qualities are 
desirable, why speak of Christian experience at all? 

lt may be worth while, in passing, to notice that 
the definitions of religion offered by modern liberalism 
show the truth of the words of a prominent modernist 
who said: “Ours is a time of religious confusion and 
upheaval.” Sometimes a comparison of such defini- 
tions with other statements of the same writers brings 
striking evidence of the existing confusion. Take, for 
example, Dr. Ames’ definition of religion as “an extra- 
ordinary enthusiasm for a cause.” This author says in 
another instance: “It is commonly accepted today that 
man is incurably religious’;* yet it is not probable 


2 The Next Step in Religion, p. 221, 
3 The New Orthodoxy, p. 10. 


36 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


that, in Professor Ames’ opinion, man is incurably giv- 
en to a cause. Again it is not clear how man can be 
said to be incurably religious, if the ‘view of modern ™ 
psychologists is accepted, viz., that man’s soul is only 
a development of the animal “mind” and that there is 
no specific religious instinct. We are told by repre- 
sentatives of religious liberalism, that “religious instinct 
consists rather in a particular direction and organiza- 
tion of the various instinctive capacities for social liv- 
ing.”’* If this view of the liberalistic religious psychol- 
ogists is accepted it is difficult to see, we repeat, how 
man can be supposed to be incurably religious. 

Dr. George Willis Cooke, a noted liberalistic theo- 
logian has recently published a large book on The Se- . 
cial Evolution of Religion in which he defines religion 
as “the trend and aim of our present collective mind.” 
Professor Roy Wood Seilars, as' we have seen, defines 
religion as loyalty. This writer says further; “Such at- 
titudes and expectations as prayer, worship, immortali-_ 
ty, providence [i. e., God], are expressions of the pre- 
scientific view of the world. But as man partly out- 
grows, partly learns to reject the primitive thought of 
the world, this perspective and these elements will 
drop from religion.’® Here, then, is godless, prayerless, 
spiritless, earthly, materialistic religion — confusion 
forsooth. 

Albrecht Ritschl, the father of liberalistic theology, 
held that the Christian religion (as he taught it) is es- 
tablished on experience. His views on the points un- 
der consideration have been accepted by many repre- 
sentatives of the religious liberalism. It is therefore 
in order to inquire more closely into his position. As 


4 Coe, A Social Theory of Religious Education, p. 141. 

5 The Next Step in Religion, p. 6. Professor Sellars is a mem- 
ber of the Unitarian Church. He was one of the principal speakers _ 
at the Annual Western Unitarian Conference, held in May, 1920, 
in Minneapolis. 


MODERNIST RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 37 


has been pointed out elsewhere, he denied not only the 
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures and the de- 
ity of Christ, but also the plan of salvation, as taught 
in Scripture. He disowned the most essential funda- 
mentals of the Christian faith, He reduced the Chris- 
tian religion to morality; he made morality the center 
and constructed his theology from the point of view of 
ethics. Nevertheless he appealed to religious experi- 
ence as his authority for what he held to be the Chris- 
tian religion. Ritsch] defended strange ideas, however, 
concerning the nature of Christian experience, though 
he would found his theology on it. Since he disowned 
the deity of Christ, he rejected the idea of an imme- 
diate relation to Christ for the Christian. He express- 
ly disowned the thought of entering into such relation 
by personal faith, or conversion. He held that a belief 
of having personally obtained grace and_ salvation 
through Christ was out of place. In short, a real per- 
sonal relation to God and having fellowship with Him 
(1 John 1:3) he believed to be “mysticism” which he 
bitterly detested. Sifted down to its substance, Ritschl 
and his followers believe Christian experience to be a 
conviction of the excellency of morality. No one 
doubts the desirability of morality, but the question is: 
Does such a conviction deserve the name ef Christian 
experience? 

A noteworthy article under the title of The Relig- 
ton of Experience has been published by a Unitarian 
clergyman. The article is remarkable because it is a 
striking illustration of the incredibly elusive and de- 
ceptive way in which the term religious experience is 
used by modern liberalists. The writer of the said ar- 
ticle declares that religion should be based, not upon 
God but “upon the strength and worth of man,” and 
that man should realize “that all that he has is the re- 
sult of his own effort.” Man should “not depend upon 


38 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


some supernatural power for wisdom, or recognize this 
power as the source of all his blessings.” Now this 
writer asserts further that the view which he defends 
— which in plain words is rank atheism — “is the uni- 
versal experience of man throughout the ages”’® Of 
such a position it may be said that it is eae and 
religious experience gone mad. 

The fact has often been overlooked that man is an 
essentially religious being. One of the liberalistic 
writers has said, as already noted, that man is incur- 
ably religious. If this is true, as it probably is, it fol- 
lows that every man has some sort of religious experi- 
ences, be they ever so worthless. The most degraded 
pagan has some satisfaction from his religion. He has 
a feeling of uneasiness unless he follows his erring con- 
science. The reason is that his conscience, though 
originally God-given, has become a tool of the powers 
of darkness. Most Christian believers will realize that 
before their conversion they were not without religious 
sentiments and feeling. It is a generally known fact 
that there are Christian professors who are not really 
Christians at heart, but they may have religious ex- 
periences of some sort. 

Though man is naturally religious and hence has 
naturally some sort of religious experiences, be they 
ever so vague, it does not follow that his natural relig- 
ious faculties will enable him to ascertain the saving 
divine truth and find the way of salvation. The fact is 
that the most religious persons are often spiritually 
blind, as witness the zeal of some of the heathen de- 
votees of India and other lands. In consequence of 
man’s natural sinfulness the powers of darkness are 
playing havoc with his natural religiousness and religious 
experiences. Therefore religious experiences, based on 
natural “universal” religion, do not furnish an adequate 


6 The Christian Register, March 13, 1919, p. 1. 


DOUBT IS HARMFUL 39 


foundation for establishing religious truth. Any religious 
experimenting on the basis of mere natural religion does 
not bring satisfactory results. The vital religious questions 
cannot be solved in this way. 

Modern religious liberalism undertakes, by the 
study of religion from a natural viewpoint, and experi- 
menting along the line of religious psychology, to es- 
tablish religious truth. The results are destructive 
even to natural religion. The most thorough-going 
liberalists now, as we have seen, identify religion with 
morality. They disown all religion except in so far 
as they give to morality the name of religion. The 
study of natural religion for the purpose of finding a 
foundation or norm for religious truth is the wrong 
thing also for the reason that such experimenting im- 
plies an attitude of doubt or indifference toward God’s 
Word. 

To doubt the Christian truth is always the wrong 
course. Be the doubter ever so honest, the fact re- 
mains that doubting the truth regarding salvation leads 
into darkness, not into light. Hence the necessity of 
differentiating between experimental and experiental 
religion or, in other words, between religious experi- 
menting and Christian experience. 

Christian experience, to be worthy of the name, 
pre-supposes Christian faith. Such experience is ex- 
cluded where the fundamentals of the faith are treated 
with indifference, or denied. Discounting the truth of 
the Gospel makes Christian experience impossible. De- 
ny the deity of Christ and the Atonement and you de- 
stroy the possibility of true Christian experience. Again, 
accept the Gospel message unreservedly and you will 
‘experience a great change of mind and heart. If 
your faith is steadfast, the reality of this change will 
become more and more clear to you. The change is the 
result of personal faith in Jesus Christ — not of follow- 


40 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ing a natural impulse but of giving heed to the prompt- 
ing of the Holy Spirit. It is not mere development of 
natural religious powers, but is of a supernatural char- | 
acter—not your own work but the work of God. 

Christian experience, then, is the consciousness of 
a supernatural personal relation to God, the realiza- 
tion of being right with God, being His child, through 
the great work of Christ. Let no one suppose that this 
means simply belief in the popular doctrine of the fa- 
therhood of God. On the contrary, it means a realiza- 
tion of the contrast between being God’s child by re- 
_ generation and being His child in the sense as taught 
by modernism, namely in the sense that you were flis 
child before your conversion. True Christian experi- 
ence brings the firm conviction of the reality of the 
great redemption. wrought by Christ; of the reality «! 
personal salvation through Him. : 

Christian experience results in victory over sin, as 
well as victory over the adverse experiences, disap- 
pointments and tragedies of human life. And this is 
a point on which modern liberalism is totally failing. 
We quote here a remarkable statement by Dean Fenn, 
of the Divinity School, Harvard University, a Unitari- 
an minister. He says: 


We must seriously raise the question whether [religious] lib- 
eralism can bear the weight of the tragedies of human experience. 
Does not its amiable faith in inherent goodness appear but ghastly 
mocxery when confronted by the facts of life?__......A religious 
doctrine which cannot bear the weight of the heart-breaking dis- 
asters of life will prove a broken reed piercing the hand of him 
who leans upon it. Every fall is a fall upward — tell that to a 
man who by his own sin has fallen from a position of honor and 
power into deep and damning disgrace.7 

While the message of religious liberalism, with its 
impotent God of law and natural force, is but “ghastly 


mockery” to him who seeks salvation from sin and 


7 The American Journal ef Theelegy, 1913, p. 516. 


REALITY OF SALVATION 4] 


divine power to uphold him in the crushing experiences 
of life, the acceptance of the Christian message, on the 
other hand, (resulting in Christian experience) is fully 
adequate to his needs. The actual realization of the 
living God and of a blessed personal relation to Him 
necessarily brings the conviction that He is doing the 
very best for His child even in the disappointments 
which He may permit to befall him; and that trials 
wit! in the end result in great blessing, if they are 
berne as they ought. 

This answers also the question, How may I know 
that the Bible is God’s Word: Liberalism says, you 
should treat the Bible not as a divine message but as 
any human book. Modernism proposes that we exam- 
ine the Bible, one part after another, in a critical spir- 
it, to find whether it is acceptable. This means that 
you should appoint yourself a judge over the Bible, in- 
stead of approaching it with a willingness to be judged 
by it. Christian faith, on the contrary, says: If your 
own brains were sufficient to enable you to find the 
way of life and accomplish your own salvation without 
supernatural divine aid; if you were able to set up a 
standard by which the Bible is to be judged, there 
would be no need for the Scriptures. 

The Bible comes to you with a message. The mes- 
sage, if true, is of incomparable value. You are called 
upon to experience the truth of the message. It con- 
sists of truths, or doctrines, concerning God and His 
nature, man and his condition, the way of salvation, 
etc. You are bidden to believe and fully accept the 
message. There are excellent reasons for believing 
that ihe message is true. The most convincing reason, 
perhaps, is that Christianity will do for you what it 
claims to do. If you are conscious of personal sin and 
of an unsatisfactory relation to God, Christianity of- 
fers a way for fully removing the burden of sin and 


42 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


guilt and giving you a deep consciousness of a vital 
relationship to God, the relation of a child to his loving 
father. The Christian message points out a way to. 
make you abound in the fruits of the spirit. You wili 
be enabled to lead a life of victory over sin and over 
the adverse conditions and failures of life. When the 
real tests come which prove the modern conceptions of 
God and of religion to be utterly inadequate, the old 
Bible faith will make you “more than conqueror.” It 
will turn your defeats into victories. It will make you 
the stronger spiritually and morally for adverse ex- 
periences. 

True Christian experience will also cure you of the 
worldly-wise idea that the endeavor to improve social 
conditions is the essence of Christianity and is of great- 
er importance than maintaining the proper personal 
relationship to God and bringing others into such rela- 
tionship. Unless your Christian faith is mere show 
and pretence, you will clearly see that it is the greatest 
treasure which you possess. You would willingly give 
your earthly possessions and social advantages for your 
faith. You are fully convinced that you can render no 
greater service to your fellow-man than to get him to 
accept the Christian message and enjoy the blessings 
of salvation. It will become clear to you that working 
for the personal conversion of men is the most impor- 
tant service you can render to the community and to 
society —that above all else society needs truly con- 
verted Christians to prevent the destruction and chaos 
that is threatening it. 


IV 


RELIGIOUS CERTAINTY CONSIDERED FROM 
THE POINT OF VIEW OF MODERNISM 


the instance of Christian experience, again before 

us the question of the nature of Christianity. We 
have seen that modernism in general offers an ethical 
interpretation of Christianity. The essence of Chris- 
tianity is held to be morality. If this view were correct, 
Christian assurance would simply mean the certainty 
that morality is a good thing. Concerning this there 
can be no question. While it is supposed by representa- 
tives of modernism that, considered from their own 
viewpoint, all moral and religious truth is relative, or in 
other words, there is no absolute moral truth, yet it is 
a fact that all reasonable men and women agree on the 
desirability of general morality. 


GS ie insta of Christian assurance, we have, as in 


Among the modernists who accept the ethical inter- 
pretation of religion, believing that morality is the one 
essential thing, there are those—as for example the So- 
cieties for Ethical Culture—who do not desire to be 
known as religious, or Christian, and have done away 
with all theology. Others again, namely the Unitarians 
and other representatives of the so-called liberal Chris- 
tianity, claim to be religious and approve of some sort 
of theology, or some modern substitute for theology. 
It may be safely said that the ethical culture societies 
never speak of religious assurance, and we may assume 
that, as this term is used by representatives of the so- 
called liberal Christianity, it refers to the assurance they 
have for their theology. For though the message of the 
more radically liberalistic churches does not appreciably 


44 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


differ from that of the societies for moral culture, the 
liberalistic churches hold fast to the Christian name and 
hence cannot consistently renounce all Christian theol- — 
ogy. Their theology may be thoroughly modernized, 
that is to say, they may reject all the fundamentals of 
the Christian faith and treat all questions of doctrine 
and theology as entirely secondary and non-essential 
matters, nevertheless they have a right to the name of a 
religious society only to the extent that they adhere to 
some sort of theology. The Unitarians and other relig- 
ious liberals, in passing, are inconsistent on the question 
of theology. On the one hand it is their boast to have 
no theology, and on the other they maintain theological 
seminaries, they engage in public worship and desire to 
be recognized as religious societies. Without any doubt, 
when liberalists speak of religious assurance, they have 
reference to the question what assurance there may be 
for their theology. 

There is no need of dwelling here further on the fact 
that all religious liberals are agreed in the rejection of 
the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Disowning 
the Scriptures, they cannot consistently fall back on 
Scripture as an authority for a theology which they may 
defend. Now a generation or less ago the representa- 
tives of the liberalistic theology generally accepted re- 
ligious experience as a substitute for Scripture authority, 
They held that religious experience is sufficient ground 
or authority for modern theology. However, to accept 
this view is frankly to admit to be agnostic (“not know- 
ing”) about all that lies beyond the range of experience. 
“As a result,” says President McGiffert, of Union The- 
ological Seminary, “agnosticism touching many matters, 
formerly deemed fundamental, has come to be the com- 
mon attitude on the part of religious men; and even of 
theologians,.”? 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p 325. Italics mine. 


AN INADEQUATE FOUNDATION 45 


In more recent years the leaders of religious liberal- 
ism have been led to realize the impossibility of build- 
ing a theology on religious experience. Says Professor 
Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago: 

But further reflection showed that experience cannot be taken 
simply as a store house from which permanent conclusions may 
be drawn.2—-When the appeal to religious experience is acted upon, 
there emerge certain perplexities which are somewhat confusing. 
Whose “experience” shall we take as the source of our religious 
exposition? What is to prevent the agnostic from setting up his 
“experience” as the norm?...... Where, now, is the true experience 
to be found ?3 


Other liberalistic religious leaders have expressed 
themselves to the same effect. They confessedly realize 
that religious experience is not an adequate ground for 
theology. Now, since they have eliminated both Scrip- 
ture and experience as a religious authority, what, then, 
is the foundation for the new theology? The answer is 
that there is no adequate foundation and, strange as it 
may seem, not a few modern theologians have asserted 
that their theology really needs no foundation. They 
say, as has been pointed out, that the new theology is in 
essence a method rather than a system of doctrine. 
They are of the opinion that there is no absolute relig- 
ious truth, which means that there is no religious truth 
that is true in itself, true under all circumstances and 
conditions. All religious truth, they say, is relative or 
subjective, meaning that it is in fact not true, though for 
practical purposes it is considered well to let it pass. | 
Theology, therefore, is to be used rather than accepted 
as true. Hence the question of religious assurance is 
superfluous. Indeed there is no occasion to speak of as- 
surance with reference to a proposition that is not claim- 
ed to be true. The question whether a religiousness 
which confessedly lacks assurance or evidence may 


2 The same, 1910, p. 217. 
3 The same, 1912, p. 594. 


46 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


prove satisfactory to those who accept it, is left to the 
reader’s consideration. | 

Lest it be supposed that we are overstating the case 
and that it is impossible that intelligent people accept a 
proposition which is, by its own advocates, not supposed 
to be true, a number of liberalistic writers are further 
quoted on the point in question. A well-informed writ- 
er points out that “the view of truth as purely personal 
or relative” is largely accepted today.* “We have come 
to a place where the very life of religion is threatened 
by a sickening sense of relativism,’ says a writer in a 
prominent theological magazine.® Dean Fenn, of Har- 
vard University, testifies: That the acceptance of the 
liberalistic view of Jesus “is incompatible with religious 
certainty and finality, the liberal is perfectly well a- 
ware.’*® “Liberalism can develop a consistently strong 
position” said a speaker in a liberal religious congress, 
“only as a basis of faith shall be discovered” aside from 
the basis of evangelical faith.? Professor Gerald Birney 
Smith points out that “there is no more fundamental 
need today” than that a way be found of formulating 
religious faith anew; and in the same connection he 
speaks of “a burden that is fast becoming unendur- 
able.”’* The same author speaks of “the agony of un- 
certainty which is so prevalent in our day.”® He says 
further: “But thoughtful men and conscientious people 
are painfully aware that as yet nothing of a strong, pos- 
itive character has come to take the place of the older 
type of theology.”?® This author, though here he de- 
sires something “of a strong, positive character,” has in 
other instances used language showing that he agrees 


4 The Unpopular Review, July-September, 1918, p. 100. 
5 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 84. 

6 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 514. 

7 The same, 1911, p. 499. 

8 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 549. 
9 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 607. 

10 The same, p. 606. 


THE AGONY OF UNCERTAINTY 47 


with Professor Roy Wood Sellars who says: “The church 
must give up the idea that tt can teach final truth on any 
subject,....the ministers cannot give a final statement a- 
bout anything." Therefore, so Professor Sellars argues, 
the church should devote itself to purely humanitarian en- 
deavors. (Compare p. 226 of the present book). 

Clearly, then, modernism is devoid of the most 1m- 
portant part, namely a foundation. Could there be a 
more striking evidence of its secondary non-vital char- 
acter? And must it not be assumed that people who do 
their own thinking will eventually realize the unreason- 
ableness of such a theology? An American President 
is credited with the saying that “you cannot fool the 
people all the time.” But some of the liberal theolo- 
gians are seeking a foundation for their position. And 
what sort of a foundation do they seek? Evidently not 
one of supernatural character, for they, in principle, re- 
ject supernaturalism inclusive of divine revelation as 
given in Scripture. The attempt to find a foundation, 
outside of Scripture, for the shreds of Christian theology 
which they may desire to maintain, is evidently futile. 
Science is silent on the points in question. The hope 
that something may “turn up” which may serve this 
purpose is indeed pathetic. It is not unlike the expecta- 
tion of the shepherd who came to a goldsmith to inquire 
about the value of a big lump of gold. Asked if he had 
one, he replied, no, but he hoped to find one. How 
strange that in an age which boasts of its enlighten- 
ment there are those who will accept a theology which 
its representatives are laboring to maintain without a 
foundation. 

It has been shown elsewhere that there is a close 
connection between Christian assurance and the experi- 
ence of salvation in the Bible sense. However the fact 
needs emphasis that Christian experience is made pos- 


11 The Christian Register, July 29, 1920, p. 7 seq. Italics mine. 


48 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


sible only through God’s Word. Various writers have 
expressed the opinion that the nature and interpretation 
of religious experience is a secondary ‘matter and that 
any. one who claims to have some sort of experience 
through Christ is to be given the hand of fellowship, 
without regard to his position as to doctrinal points. 
But so long as Scripture teaching concerning personal 
salvation is to be taken seriously, the fact must be rec- 
ognized that Christian experience, to be genuine, must 
be based on the fundamental truths concerning the per- 
son and work of Christ. If He is not the divine Savior 
in the Biblical sense; if the Bible doctrine of the Atone- 
ment and salvation through Christ fis not true to fact — 
or, in other words, if these truths are denied — then 
there cannot be true Christian experience though there 
may be religious experience of some sort. Therefore 
the assertion that experience alone is the important 
matter without regard to the interpretation or meaning 
of such experience, is unacceptable. It is generally 
known that there are those who, while repudiating the 
fundamentals of the faith, profess Christian experience. 
It is, therefore, necessary to inquire into their interpre- 
tation or definition of experience: Is it of a Scriptural 
character? The foundation of Christian assurance is 
God’s Word, which is confirmed by Christian experience. 


V 


PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 


ascertain, without the aid of divine revelation, the 

truth concerning man, his existence, his relation 
to the universe and his destiny. Philosophy, iit is worthy 
of notice, is older than the Christian religion. The fa- 
mous philosophers Plato and Aristotle, of Greece, lived 
in the fourth century B. C. Among modern philoso- 
phers Henri Bergson, of France, and Rudolf Eucken, of 
Germany, deserve mention. The most striking thing 
about philosophy, perhaps, is the great variety of opinion 
among its representatives or, in other words, the unre- 
liability of their conclusions. Says Leslie Stephen: 


Be veers, wi may be defined as the attempt to 


State any proposition in which all philosophers agree, and I 
will admit it to be true; or any one that has a manifest balance of 
authority, and I will agree that it is probable. But so long as 
every philosopher flatly contradicts the principles of his predeces- 
sors, why affect certainty? 


The father of modern philosophy, the Frenchman 
Descartes (1596-1650), owes his fame to a theory of 
knowledge which he defended. According to this the- 
ory the true basis for philosophy is man’s self-conscious- 
ness. Descartes doubted everything except his own ex- 
istence. From the basis of his existence and self-con- 
sciousness he attempted to prove the existence of God 
and the external world. He made his own self-con- 
sciousness — i.e. himself —the center and basis of all. 
Ail existence, he believed, is mental and what is not 
known does not exist. He actually supposed that what 
he did not apprehend had no existence. This strange 


50 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


theory has been accepted by philosophers in general.? 
But from this starting point they have arrived at a great 
diversity of conclusions. Inadequate as such a founda- 
tion seems, there is, apparently, no better one for a 
structure which in principle rejects divine revelation, 
as does philosophy. 

Philosophy, it should be noticed, cannot take the 
place of the Scriptures as a basis for the Christian faith. 
This fact is recognized by philosophers in general. 
Christian theology, or, in other words, the statement of 
the Christian faith, is founded on divine revelation as 
given in Scripture. Scripture, being divinely inspired, 
is the only true basis for theology. And without the ac- 
ceptance of divine revelation and without Scriptural — 
theology, a church worthy of the Christian name could 
not be maintained. Philosophy, even if it be the so- 
called philosophy of religion, could not take the place 
of theology for the church. 

The assertion has been made, by the more moderate 
of the representatives of modernism, that the individual 
religious feeling, or the religious consciousness, can be 
made the foundation for a Christian theology. In other 
words, just as philosophy is based on self-consciousness, 
so the attempt is made to establish a theology — or, 
more correctly, a religious philosophy —on religious 
self-consciousness. This means that Scripture authority 
is to be superseded by the principle that each man should 
be a law and authority unto himself. But it is clearly 
impossible to build a. Christian theology on no other 
ground than religious consciousness. It is hardly nec- 
essary to repeat here that religious conceptions and con- 
sciousness may be unsound and deceptive. Not even 
upon Christian religious consciousness alone could a 

1 Concerning this theory of knowledge and its uncertainty 


compare Santayana, Winds of Doctrine, pp. 13, 40, 55; Anglican 
Theological Review, vol. I, p. 50. - 


NO DOCTRINE HELD ESSENTIAL 51 


Christian theology be established, and it is quite out of 
the question to establish it upon non-Christian religious 
consciousness. This means that to reject the Scriptures 
as the authoritative record of divine revelation is to dis- 
card the only valid foundation for Christian theology. ,, 
Modernism, rejecting the authority of Scripture, is ier 
out an adequate foundation, as will be further shown 
elsewhere. 

The content of Christian theology is Christian doc- 
trine or dogma. Generally speaking dogma is doctrine 
based on authority, rather than on direct proof. Chris- 
tian dogma is the doctrine of the Christian church found- 
ed on God’s Word. The modern aversion to Christian 
dogma is due to the rejection of the authority of Scrip- 
ture. Obviously the consistent thing for the religious 
liberalists, who deny the inspiration of Scripture, is to 
reject all dogmatic teaching and ascribe to doctrine lit- 
tle, if any importance. It is worthy of notice that sci- 
ence, except in so far as it accepts the Scripture record, 
is not consistent if it offers dogmatic teaching, 

One of the characteristics of modernism is that no_ 
doctrine is held to be essential, or as a dogma. Chris- 
tian doctrine is either rejected outright, or treated as a 
secondary matter. Professor Gerald Birney Smith 
shows that the older liberalism rejected all dogmas ex- 
cept three, namely the doctrines of God, freedom of the 
will, and immortality. Then this writer proceeds to say 
that the new theology does not hold to any dogma what- 
ever.” Neither the three dogmas just mentioned nor 
other doctrines are considered essential to the modern re- 
ligious liberalism. “There is still altogether too much of 
the older feeling,” says Professor Smith, “that the re- 
sult of Biblical study should be to establish an absolute- 
ly true and unchanging system of theology.’* “A new 


2 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 190. 
3 The same, p. 200. 


Sf MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


theology of this dogmatic sort,” nS says further, “would 
not really mark much advance.” 

It may sound unbelievable but it is a fact that the 
‘religious liberalists hold the method of theology, rather 
than its content, to be of principal importance. Pro- 
fessor Smith insists that liberalistic theology is a meth- 
od rather than doctrine or a doctrinal system.’ Profess- 
or John Wright Buckham, of the Pacific School of Re- 
ligion, Berkeley, Cal., says: “It is not doctrine at all, 
whether old or new, that is fundamental, but faith.”® 
What is meant by “faith,” however, as the word is used 
here by this author, is impossible to know. Professor. 
Herbert A. Youtz, of Oberlin Theological Seminary, a 
representative of modernism, says: “We evoke Jesus’ 
authority, not to justify our form of faith but rather to 
justify the faith itself.” One of the Unitarian period- 
icals, according to the testimony of its editor, cham- 
pions faith but “not faith in any particular thing [doc- 
trine] about which others may have their doubt, but 
faith im faith ttself”’®> So modernism does not advocate 
a particular doctrine, or form of faith, but “faith itself.” 
Such statements may seem profound to the unthinking 
but, unless “faith itself” is defined and has a real mean- 
ing, these statements do not mean anything worth while. 
For illustration: the Unitarian church paper just men- 
tioned, though professing to stand for “faith itself,” 
opens its columns to those who flatly deny the very ex- 
istence of God — an evidence that “faith itself,” as used 
by the said editor, does not refer to the Christian faith. 

Many liberal writers have expressed the opinion that 
definite doctrine and theology is a matter of very little 
if any, consequence. Professor George Cross, of Roches- 


4 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 201. 

5 The same, p. 201. The Biblical World, October, 1914, p. 275. 
6 The Biblical World, April, 1915, p. 215. 

T The Enlarging Conception of Cod. 1914, p. 148. 

8 The Christian Register, April 3, 1919. 


INDIFFERENCE IN DOCTRINAL QUESTIONS 53 


ter Theological Seminary, for example, thinks “there is 
something of greater worth to Christian churches than 


the doctrinal beliefs they hold.”® Lyman Abbott wrote: § 


“There is as little danger of undermining religion by 
new [modern] definitions of theology as there is of blot- 
ting out the stars from the heavens by a new astrono- 
my.”?° “If we seek to keep Christian doctrine unchang- 
ed,” says Walter Rauschenbusch, “we shall ensure its 
abandonment.”!! And again this writer says: “The sav- 
ing power of the church does not rest on its doctrine.”!” 
A Unitarian minister points out that he ceased to be- 
lieve the inerrancy of the Scriptures, the deity of Christ 
and the personality of God. “Little by little it dawned 
upon me,” he observes further, “that faith is not found- 
ed on heliefs about things. Faith is founded on the 
essential structure of the universe, and is an essential 
characteristic of man and of all other life.’?* Dr. John 
Herman Randall, until recently a Baptist minister, says: 
“My own conviction is that if all the creeds and dogmas 
and paraphernalia of the churches in Christendom today 
could be set aside....nothing would be lost.’”2* “Dog- 
ma is dead,” says the editor of a prominent paper. Many 
liberalistic writers have expressed themselves similarly. 
“For a generation now we have been preaching that 
experience is the great thing, and not creed;...we are 
losing the creed that alone can produce an experience 
higher than the vagaries of idiosyncracy,” writes the 
British theologian Peter Taylor Forsyth.*® 


_ Now, if doctrine is of secondary importance: if method 
instead of doctrine and truth is the principal thing in 


9 The American Journal of Theology, 1919, p. 143. 

10 The Theology of an Evolutionist, 1897, p. 3. 

11 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 7. 

12 The same, p. 129. 

138 The Christian Register, October 31, 1918, p. 12. Italics mine. 
14 The Biblical World, April, 1916, p. 268. 

15 The London Quarterly Review, vol. 123, p. 194, 


54. MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Christian theology, it follows that there cannot be any- 
thing that may be spoken of as the essence of Christian- 
ity in any real sense. This is freely admitted by repre-_ 
sentatives of religious liberalism. To ask what is the 
essence of Christianity, thinks Professor Shirley Jack- 
son Case of the University of Chicago, is to show that 
you misconceive the real nature of the modern religion.*® 
It has no essence, no real, absolute truth, either as con- 
cerns religion, or morals.17 In our rapidly changing 
civilization, says Professor Gerald Birney Smith, “abso- 
lutes are out of place.”1® This means that liberalism has 
no positive teachings. The denial of all positive relig- 
ious thought is, in fact, the principal characteristic of 
modern liberalism. The consequence is that the church, 
to the extent that it has been liberalized, has become an — 
agency to spread agnosticism. 

A number of years ago, Dr. Arthur Sachs, Professor 
in the University of Breslau, a Jew, wrote: | 

‘ Every liberalistic religion carries in its bosom the germ of 
death. A religion without dogma is a creature of the imagination 
which under no circumstances is able to give to individual man, 
much less to the human family, the necessary anchor-hold in this 
life and the hope for perfection in the beyond. At the moment it 
becomes “liberal,” it begins to degrade into a mere philosophy. No 
system of philosophy has yet been able to satisfy the supernatural 
longings of man, and we may confidently prophesy that philosophy 
will always fail in this respect, for every philosophy originates in 
the human brain while religion represents a gracious divine revela- 
tion. 

Modern religious liberalism has really only one dog- 
ma and consequently knows just one heresy. Liberal- 
ism denies the opinion that there iis positive religious 
truth. From this viewpoint a person is heretical to the 
extent that he may believe that there is absolute relig- 


16 The Christian Register, April 18, 1918, p. 15. The American 
Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 541. 
17 Compare pp. 46 and 226 of the present book. 


18 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 558. 


UNREASONABLE MODERNIST DOGMA 55 


ious truth. But this new dogma is unreasonable. When 
liberalists say, there is no positive religious truth, they 
make an assertion which is absolutely incapable of proof. 
Clearly this position is one of unreasonable dogmatism. 
Professor Gerald Birney Smith has rightly said that neg- 
ative dogmatism is “as unjustified as positive dogma- 
tism.”?® A Christian teacher or minister who teaches 
nothing dogmatic concerning the Christian fundamentals 
takes the position that there is no absolute truth as to 
these points. Such a teacher stands for negative dog- 
matism while positive dogma is not acceptable to him. 
This negative dogmatism is quite common in liberalistic 
circles. John H. Holmes says rightfully: “Even those 
radical churches which have freed themselves from all 
theological bonds, have gone to the other extreme of 
setting up a structure of denial which ts just as exclusive 
as any of the creeds of Christendom.’ 

Not a few liberalistic theologians have thought that 
loyalty to Jesus is the one thing essential and is a sub- 
stitute for Christian theology. But loyalty to Jesus does 
not necessarily mean a religious attitude. Some of the 
anti-religious, atheistic Socialists of Europe profess loy- 
alty to Jesus. They believe Him to have been a great 
social reformer. “The social gospel arouses a fresh and * 
warm loyalty to Christ wherever it goes, though not 
always a loyalty to the church,” says Walter Rauschen- 
busch; “it is believed by trinitarians and unitarians a- 
like.”?? But can there be loyalty to Christ without a 
recognition of His divine nature? True loyalty to Him 
is based on the truth regarding Him, or in other words, 
on theology. This is generally denied in modern liber- 
alistic circles. President McGiffert, for example, says: 
“T am not talking here of the origin and nature of Jesus 


19 The same, p. 539. 
20 Unity, May 22, 1919, p. 140. 
21 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 148. 


56 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Christ.....All this is of secondary importance.”?? On 
the beats Principal Alfred Ernest Garvie, of New 
College, London, has well said: “The doctrine of the de-. 
ity of Christ has been much under debate in recent years. 
~ The Christian church cannot accept the denial of that 
doctrine [that is to say, the church cannot turn Unitari- 
an] without the sacrifice of its inmost life.”?? Dr. Henry 
W. Clark says: “Christ’s revelation has now been min- 
imized down to a few inspiring ideas and His work re- 
duced to be the application of these ideas, by word and 
example, to the lives of men.”?* In other words, the 
setting aside of creed and theology has robbed the church 
“. (in so far as the church has been liberalized) of its di- 
vine Christ. Of the Redeemer, by atonement, iit has | 
made a savior by teaching, leaving it to every man to - 
redeem himself by following the ideal. | 


Notwithstanding all that liberalists have said in dis- 
paragement of doctrine and creed they must be aware 
that the shreds of Christian theology which they have 
retained are their only ground for their claim to the 
Christian name. If they discarded all theological pre- 
tense, their lot would not differ from that of the Eth- 
ical Culture Societies. Pathetic indeed it is to see the 
representatives of modern religious liberalism bending 
their energies upon finding a foundation, or an excuse, 
for some sort of theology to which they may lay claim. 
They have thought that such an excuse could be found 
in the fact that they treat all matters of docrine as sec- 
ondary, unimportant. 

But to teach Christian doctrine as a secondary mat- 
ter is clearly unjustifiable. Take for example the doc- 
trine of Christ, His person and His work, as taught jin 


22 The American Journal of Theology, 1911, 
23 The Christian Certainty Amid the Modern pare. 1910, 


24 aheeat Orthodoxy, 1914, p. 285. 


WORTHLESSNESS OF MODERNIST THEOLOGY 57 


Scripture. If this doctrine is true, if Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God, has come into the world to make atonement 
for the sin of the world, then this is the most stupendous 
fact in history. Were it not true, we should be com- 
pelled to say it is the greatest of falsehoods. It is im- 
possible to treat this doctrine as a secondary matter. If 
it be not accepted, it must be rejected. The same is true 
of other doctrines, such as that of God, of the plan of 
salvation, of the immortality of the soul, and of Bible 
doctrine in general. 

It may, of course, be replied that liberalistic theology 
is substantially a denial of the doctrines of Christianity 
and what liberalists have retained of Christianity has 
been revolutionized and modernized. But such denial 
and “modernization,” even if it were justifiable, is not a 
secondary matter; it is obviously a matter of primary 
concern. Furthermore, since the theology which modern 
liberalists teach has no essential doctrines, it cannot be 
of any real worth. Indeed a theology which holds its 
own doctrines as secondary, non-vital opinions, and 
which teaches that the church should doctrinally not 
stand for anything specific and should have no doctrinal 
test — such a theology cannot be taken seriously. In 
the eyes of those who do their own thinking it is a crea- 
tion of human dreams. A theology of such nature is 
destined to fail in its self-appointed task of successfully 
apologizing for its own pitiable existence. 


VI 


THE FATHERS OF LIBERALISTIC THEOLOGY 


is generally held to be the principal forerunner of 
liberalistic theology. Strange as his particular 
teachings may appear to us, religious liberalism consid- 
ers Schleiermacher one of the greatest theologians. The 
reason is that he was the first Christian teacher whose 
system of theology makes Bible authority superfluous. 
He taught that knowledge and belief are not vital to 
religion; hence the acceptance of the Bible is not essen- 
tial; there is no real need of it. The proper foundation 
for religion, or religious truth is, in his opinion, not the 
Scriptures but the natural religious consciousness or 
feeling. Not only did he exclude belief from the sphere 
of religion but he held that action also does not really 
belong to it. Feeling is, in his opinion, the one essential 
thing in religion. Notwithstanding Schleiermacher and 
the host of those who recognize him as a theological 
leader, the fact remains that religion, when it lacks 
knowledge and acceptance of the truth, on one hand,’ 
and a consistent life, on the other, is an exceedingly 
weak thing, if it is not a mighty instrument of evil. 
Albrecht Ritschl, the father of modernism (1822- 
1889) did not accept Schleiermacher’s thought that feel- 
ing is the one thing in religion that is essential. How- 
ever, he agreed with Schleiermacher on the point that — 
feeling, instead of the Scriptures, is the foundation for 
religious faith, or the source of religious truth. He 
teaches that the facts on which theology is based are to 
be sought in religious consciousness or feeling, and no- 


\ Ts German theologian Schleiermacher (1768-1834) 


MODERNIST TEACHINGS ON FUNDMENTALS 59 


where else. As for the Scriptures he denied their in- 
spiration and authority. The follower of Ritschl seeks 
God and theological truth in himself. He says, he finds 
“an indefinite and indefinable feeling which he believes 
to be God.” He thinks, it can be rightfully said that 
God is good and hence God must be personal, for only 
a person could be good. Ritschl, therefore, teaches the 
existence of a personal God. Fundamental as this doc- 
trine is, it is not an exclusively Christian teaching; there 
are other religious systems, such as the Jewish and Mo- 
hammedan, that teach the personality of God. 

Ritschl rejected the deity of Christ but thought that 
Jesus was a religious genius, a religious hero who had 
progressed so far in moral and spiritual attainments 
that he has to the Christian “the value of God.” But 
the idea that someone or something that is not God 
should have the value of God is unacceptable from the 
Christian viewpoint; it is, on the contrary, distinctly 
pagan. Ritschl speaks of Jesus as divine but flatly de- 
nies His divine nature. He also denies His miraculous 
birth, His miracles, His resurrection. On the atone- © 
ment of Christ he wrote a large work in which he de- 
fends a doctrine which leaves out the cardinal points of 
the substitutional sacrifice of Christ. The immortality 
of the soul is treated in his theology as an indifferent 
matter, 

The most objectionable feature of Ritschlianism is 
its twofacedness. It uses the old words and names with 
new meanings; the negative liberal thought is clothed in 
the old orthodox expressions. It comes in the old garb 
but in content and meaning it differs radically from the 
old doctrines. The real differences between Ritschlian- 
ism and the old Bible faith are in substance and content, 
rather than in form and appearance. While retaining a 
semblance of Christian theology, Christian doctrine is 
either substantially changed or rejected outright. In a 


60 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


word, it is a denial of the essential Christian truth com- 
ing in the cloak of a pious vocabulary. The most nota- 
ble representative of Ritschlianism in America was Wil- | 
liam Newton Clarke. | 

In more recent years a new and more radical type of 
liberalistic theology has come into vogue. It is called 
the historical, or historico-religious, method. The rep- 
resentatives of this radical rejection of Christian truth 
agree with Schleiermacher and Ritschl in disowning the 
Scriptures as an authority or source of religious truth. 
Instead of taking religious consciousness or feeling for 
their starting point, however, they make the general his- 
tory of the religions of the world the point from which 
Christianity is to be explained. They start from the 
supposition that, just as the pagan religious systems are 
the product of natural growth and evolution, Christian- 
ity also, as well as Judaism, is a natural development 


‘and not the result of a supernatural divine revelation. 


If Christianity be better than some other religions, they 
say, the difference is in degree and not in kind. Not 
only do they deny the specific truths of the Christian re- 
ligion but they reject the supernatural. They abandon 
religious thought so far as it has to do with the super- 
natural. While the Ritschlians think they find God 
within themselves, the most advanced representatives of 
the historical method have a pantheistic conception of 
God. They teach that the human mind is a part of God 
and that God is immanent in the world in such manner 
that it is impossible to distinguish between God and 
man. They believe, therefore, what the Ritschlian finds 


in himself and supposes to be God is only his own mind 
and feeling. 


It is worthy of notice that this most advanced type 
of modernism has to no small extent discarded the vo- 
cabulary of Christian doctrine or theology. Some of its 
representatives frankly admit that the theological coun- 


SO-CALLED HISTORICAL METHOD 61 


terfeiting of the more conservative modernists is un- 
called-for. One of the leading men representing the his- 
torical method is Professor Troeltsch, of Berlin. In the 
liberalistic seminaries Ritschlianism is giving place to 
radical liberalism. Says Dean Shailer Mathews, “Bar- 
ring a few significant exceptions, theological seminaries 
throughout the Protestant world are committed to the 
historic-critical study of the Bible.”? 

In general it may be said that the more moderate 
liberals represent some type of Ritschlian theology while 
the more radical representatives of liberalism follow the 
so-called historical method. 


1 The Biblical World,‘ November, 1920, p. 554. 


VII 


THE MODERN DOCTRINE OF DIVINE 
IMMANENCE , 


Scriptures the foremost tenet in modern liberal- 

istic theology is the dogma of the immanence of 
God. We speak of it as a dogma for the reason that the 
representatives of religious liberalism are quite dogmat- 
ic in teaching this unproved theory. The immanence of 
God means that God is in character not distinct from 
the world but is a part of the world. God is supposed 
to be the force or energy which has developed the world 
through the natural process of evolution. Prayer to 
God is, without question, uncalled-for where this defini- 
tion is accepted. 

It may be in order here to notice that the Scriptures 
teach that God is a personal Being or, in other words, a 
Being possessing will and intelligence. Hence He is 
immeasurably more than mere force or law. The God 
whom the Bible reveals is the almighty Creator, Pre- 
server, and Governor of the universe. Instead of the 
modern doctrine that God is the force or energy pervad- 
ing nature, the Bible teaches God’s omnipresence. This 
means that God is present and —at least in a degree — 
active in all parts of the universe. Yet He is transcend- 
ent to the universe or, in other words, He is not a part . 
of the universe, but is a personal Being. Natural law, 
life-force, etc., is not God but is the result of His cre- 
ative work. 


B scivie the rejection of the inspiration of the 


Concerning God’s activity in the universe it is clear 
that He may work through natural causes. Just as man 


BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF GOD 63 


may make nature do his bidding by working in agree- 
ment with nature’s laws, or by bringing a higher natural 
law into play where a more inferior law is active, God 
as the omnipresent almighty Ruler of the universe may 
to an infinitely greater degree make natural law serve 
His purposes. And again, He who created nature and 
its laws may do that which requires more than a direc- 
tion of natural forces. He may, in a given case, sus- 
pend the laws of nature and do that which is superior to 
and beyond the power of natural law. To say with the 
critics that the result of any suspension of natural law 
would under existing conditions mean a greater degree 
of evil than of good, is to consider the matter from a 
purely human viewpoint. In God’s sight a miracle 
would not be a miracle if it did not accomplish His pur- 
pose or, in other words, if it caused that which is con- 
trary to His plans. As for the divine work of grace in 
the human heart, it is not the result of the working of 
the forces of nature. It is of supernatural character, 
the result of the direct working of God. 

Strange to say, modernists have commonly asserted 
that the Bible teaches an absentee (deistic) God who, 
after accomplishing the work of creation, left the world 
to its fate except for some miracles which were compar- 
atively few and far between, This is an example of the 
unreliability of some of the liberal writers. The Bible 
conception of God is not deistic but emphatically and 
consistently theistic. 

' The modern doctrine of divine immanence is founded 
not on Scripture but on the theory of evolution. The 
thought that God is a part of the world is merely a 
feature of evolutionism, President McGiffert, of the 
Union Theological Seminary, New York, it is worthy 
of notice, testifies that “the modern doctrine of divine 
immanence owes its prevalence, in part, at least, to the 
very conception of evolution to which naturalism in theology 


64 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


is largely due.” This means that the theory of divine 
immanence is founded, at least in part, on another mere 
assumption, namely the modern doctrine of evolution. _ 


The doctrine of divine immanence has revolutionized 
theology wherever it has been accepted. It means, as 
has been pointed out in a preceding paragraph, that 
“God is not thought of as separate from the universe 
but rather as its immanent law.’”? ‘The old conception 
that God...is distinct from our human life” must give 
way to “the religious belief that he is immanent in hu- 
manity,” says Walter Rauschenbusch.? As defined by 
the late Professor. Royce of Harvard University, the 
content of all finite minds is included in God’s own con- 
sciousness and will. The individual self is an identical 
part of the Divine Self.* “The divine is no more sep- 
arate and aloof; it is within and organic with the hu- 
man.’°® “God is considered as the soul of the world, the 
spirit animating nature, the universal force which takes 
the myriad forms of heat, light, gravitation, electricity 
and the like.”® In other words, God is merely a sacred X 
name for all existence. “As God is immanent in the life 
of man, divine revelation comes from within, not from ¥ 
without,” i.e. not from the Bible.*. The spirit of God is, 
identical with the spirit of man.® “In the new theology,” 
says Principal Alfred Ernest Garvie, “the distinction 
between God and man, which morality and religion alike 
demand, is confused, if not altogether denied.’” 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 323. 

2 Professor William Adams Brown, in The Harvard Theolog- 
ical Review, 1911, p. 16. 

3 Professor Walter Rauschenbusch, in A Theology for the So- 
cial Gospel, p. 178. : 

4 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 543. 

5 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, 1915, p. 121. 

6 The same, p. 201. 

T The same, p. 204. 

8 Foster, The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Ex- 
istence, p. 144. 

9 The Christian Certainty Amid the Moral Perplexity, p. 138. 


DENIAL OF SUPERNATURAL 65 


The doctrine of divine immanence then means that 
God and the world are identical—two names for the 
same thing. God is supposed to be the world-energy, 
the natural law.’ It would follow that the whole world 
is the expression of the divine force. Hence the world 
throughout, and all that is or takes place, is supposed to 
be of divine character. There is therefore no room for 
the Christian conception of sin, nor for a divine plan of 
salvation. Modern religious liberalism teaches that 
there is a “unity of force or of substance, making all 
things the expression of one all-pervading energy or of 
one all-embracing divine being.”?° “The doctrine of di- 
vine immanence, so widely current in these days, has 
served to bridge the old chasm between nature and the 
supernatural] and to make them completely one.’ 


“The first and most striking characteristic of the new 
theology,” writes Professor William Adams Brown of 
the Union Theological Seminary, “is its view of the 
world as a unity. The contrast between nature and the 
supernatural, which was fundamental for the old theol- 
ogy, has. disappeared.”?? Says a theological writer, R. 
H, Dotterer: 

Liberal theologians have emphasized the immanence of God 
and have said that al] events are supernatural since all are pro- 
duced by, or are particular expressions of, the immanent God. The 
difficulty of this procedure is however that, in thus preserving the 
right to use the word God, we are in danger of so impoverishing the 
idea of God that it becomes of little value as a religious con- 
ception.13 

“Divine immanence” says a liberalistic writer, “means 


the surrender of the old view of miracles, and with it of , 


the necessity of believing that such events have hap- 


10 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 20. 

11 President McGiffert, in The American Journal of Theology, 
1916, p. 323. 

12 The Harvard Theological Review, 1911, p. 14. 

13 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 546. 


\ 


66 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


pened.”** In short the doctrine of divine immanence is 
an arch-enemy of Christian truth, Nt) 

A number of theologians, e. g. William Newton 
Clarke, have undertaken to defend the transcendence of 
God — which means that God is not identical with the 
world —as well as His immanence. This, however, fails 
to solve the difficulty. God’s immanence, unless the ex- 
pression is devoid of all signification, means that He is 
the world energy, the one force in the universe. It 
means that there is no difference between natural and 
supernatural; that everything is a miracle of God (or 
rather that there is no miracle) ; that all that happens is 
good, being the result of the great universal law or 
force. To say that God, besides being immanent, is also 
transcendent, does not solve these difficulties. The as- 
sertion that He is both transcendent and immanent pre- 
sents the gravest mental obstacles. “Merely to say that 
God is immanent and also to say that He is transcend- 
ent and personal as well as immanent, does not solve 
the difficulty,” observes Ray H. Dotterer, “any more 
than to say that a certain geometrical figure is round 
and also has four right angles will remove the self-con- 
tradiction from the notion of a square circle.’’® 

In an article published in a religious magazine, Bishop 
Francis J. McConnell points out some, in his opinion, 
good effects of the doctrine of divine immanence, but 
thinks the believer in this doctrine “is not always sure 
of just where to stop,” and that there is “but an easy 
step or rather an easy slip [from this doctrine] to a be- 
lief in pantheism which allows no scope for the self- 
determination of free individuals.” “By an easy glide,” 
this writer says, the believer in divine immanence “slips 


14 The Hibbert Journal, July, 1914, p. 739. 

15 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 546. The fact must 
be recognized, however, that immanence is sometimes inaccurately 
used for omnipresence. 


DIFFICULTIES INVOLVED IN IMMANENCE 67 


over into the belief that human souls are just flowing 
forms of divine activity.” “Just how to make the dis- 
tinction here,” Bishop McConnell ‘says further, “is a 
problem for the trained metaphysician, but the distinc- 
tion must be made, at least practically, if we are to pre- 
serve religious values in their moral significance.”!® 

In a similar way President McGiffert freely admits 
the grave obstacles in the way of accepting both the im- 
manence and the transcendence of God. He speaks of 
“the serious difficulties involved in immanence” when 
the attempt is made to combine it with the Christian be- 
lief in God.**7 “Between a God who is beyond the world 
of matter and a God who is immanent in, and absorbed 
by, the world of matter, yawns a fatal chasm,” says Dr. 
Henry Berkowitz.*® 

Bistop McConnell thinks, as we have seen, that this 
is a problem for the metaphysician or, in other words, 
for the philosopher to solve. But that the philosophers 
should ever agree in offering a solution of this problem 
is out of the question. Granted, for the sake of argument, 
that they did, it is needful to remember that what they 
might have to offer us, would be merely their opinion 
which from the nature of the case would be incapable 
of proof. We should not lose sight of the fact that suc- 
ceeding philosophers would differ from them and that 
their opinion woud not give us an adequate foundation 
for our Christian faith. And is it not generally realized 
that philosophy does not even pretend to furnish us such 
a foundation? 

The more practical question, however, is, What are 
we to do so long as philosophers are engaged in the at- 
tempt to reach a decision and to make the distinction 
that is supposed to enable us to hold the doctrine of di- 


16 The Constructive Quarterly, March, 1913, p. 133, 
17 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 220 
18 The Biblical World, October, 1917, p. 216. 


68 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


vine immanence as well as the doctrines of the Christian 
faith? If we depended on the philosophers, we should 


at the present time be necessarily at sea in this all-im-_ 


portant question. We should unquestionably be gliding 


and slipping down the awful decline called divine imma- 


nence. True, we may accept some solution of our own 
invention just because it may suit our fancy. But this 
would not be worthy of intelligent persons. Clearly to 
settle such questions would be to assume the role af a 
pope. To accept either metaphysics or popery as the 
ground for a religious faith would be to build on a foun- 
dation of sand. 

The doctrine of divine immanence, as held by the 
“ representatives of the more radical religious liberalism, 
is merely a form of religious naturalism. It leaves no 
room for a theology. “As God is in alf there is,” says 
President McGiffert again, “to explain religion biolog- 
ically or psychologically [i. e., naturally] does. not make 
it any less divine.”?® But to explain religion naturally 
is not theology but religious philosophy. ‘Professor 
Kirsopp Lake is quite right: If there is no divine rey- 
elation, but only natural religion, there can be not only 
no systematic theology but no theology at all.”2° Con- 
sidered from this viewpoint there can, in other words, be 
no Christianity, unless Christianity be defined as nat- 
ural religion, 

Religious naturalism destroys and obliterates all dif- 
“ferences between theology and religious philosophy; it 
means, in a word, the suicide of theology. That the 
representatives of the new theology persistently refuse 


to recognize this is a remarkable fact. Despite their at-. 


tempted natural explanation of ali religion, they under- 
take to maintain —to keep alive by artificial means — 


19 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 323. 


20 Strong, Tour of the Missions. Observations and C onclusions, 
p. 109. | ; 


A MAKE-BELIEVE THEOLOGY 69 


some sort of theology. Some of the modernists have 
freely admitted that a church cannot live without a the- 
ology. But the theology which they make such desperate 
efforts to maintain is, by their own confession, a second- 
ary matter and is built on utterly inadequate ground. 
If the church needs a theology, will a mere make-believe, 
sailing under a theological flag, suffice? It is well to re- 
member that many of those who accept the modern 
religious views see no need for a church. People who 
do their own thinking and refuse to be led blindly must 
eventually realize that a church which needs a theology 
of such nature to give it an excuse for existence, can 
not be taken seriously. 

The more advanced type of modernism, though as a 
rule it does not openly deny the existence of God, is 
practically atheistic. Its God is, as has been shown, a 
force from which all potencies are supposed to have 
come, a mere energy which has neither volition nor free- 
dom and is not the master but the servant of nature. 
Religiously considered belief in such a god is of no val- 
ue. It is a source of weakness rather than of strength. 
Idolatry is always a curse, even if the idol be the force 
inherent in matter. And it does not remedy the matter 
in the least when liberalists say that you are free to 
believe in any God you like and to hold that God is 
transcendent, if you desire. This is making the exist- 
ence of God a matter of mere opinion and of secondary 
importance. It is assigning a secondary place to God. 
It means, in the last analysis, that He exists only as an 
idea in the minds of people. 

Sometimes religious liberalists identify God with hu- 
manity, as has been pointed out. “I worship God 
through Man,” says Professor William A. McKeever, of 
the University of Kansas. “To know God is first to 
know Man and to know Man is to worship the divinity 

in him. — Man is my best expression of Deity, and so I 


Me 


70 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


bow reverently at this shrine.’”?4 But, as Professor Roy 
Wood Sellars, of the University of Michigan, observes, 
“humanity is not an object to be worshiped”; hence, this 
liberalistic writer concludes, “the very attitude and .im- 
plications of worship must be relinquished.’** Profess- 
or Gerald Birney Smith says: “The worship of God in 
a democracy will consist in reverence for those human 
values which democracy makes supreme.”?* So modern- 
ism offers the alternative of either relinquishing all wor- 
ship, or of worshiping a god of human creation. 

A number of recent writers have defended the opin- 
ion that atheism is on the decline and that there are few 
men in our time who deny the existence of God. It is 
true that it has become the fashion for the most radical 
unbelievers to profess belief in God. Even rank mater- 
ialists like the late Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena, lay 
claim to faith in God. Some of Haeckel’s followers have 
organized themselves as a society claiming to be of 
religious nature. Not only do they profess faith in God 
but they, in their own opinion, exalt God to the highest 
eminence, since they assert that God is everything — 
the only substance, the only force in existence. We 
shall here quote a few more of the definitions of God 
given by modern religious liberals. 

Dr. John H. Dietrich, a Unitarian minister of the city 
of Minneapolis, after, expressing the view that the ortho- 
dox church has failed, writes: 


How different it might be with the world today, had religion 
based itself upon the strength and worth of man.— How different 
the world might be today, if religion, instead of teaching man to 
depend upon some supernatural power for wisdom and to recognize 
this power as the source of all his blessings, had boldly declared 
that all he had was the result of his own effort. This virile and 
human religion needs today to be declared—the religion that looks * 
for no help or consolation from without, but finds it in the indom- 
itable spirit of Good, of God, in man himself—man the doer, the 


Man and the New Democracy, p. 94. 
The Next Step in Religion, p. 7. Italics mine, 


1 
3 The Biblical World, November, 1919, p. 634. 


RELIGIOUS ATHEISM 71 


helper, the strengthener, the comforter; the religion which trans- 
fers men’s efforts from seeking help from heaven whence no help 
comes to a firm and confident reliance upon themselves in whom 
lies the possibility fo all things.*4 


Professor Gerald Birney Smith speaks of God as 
“the spiritual forces of the world in which we live,”’*® 
“the unseen forces of the universe.”””° According to the 
late Professor Royce, God is the immanent “spirit of 
the community.””’? The British liberal theologian R, J. 
Campbell says: “God is my deeper self and yours too; 
he is the self of the universe.’** A writer in a British 
theological magazine thinks God is to be conceived as 
“the Common Will of all living creatures.’2® John Her- 
man Randall holds that substance, reality, spirit, God, 
self are synonymous.*® President G. Stanley Hall, of 
Clark University, defends the view that “God is the 
truth, virtue, beauty, of man” and the real atheist is only 
he “who denies these attributes to man.’”*? “Do you ask 
me whether God is simply the spirit of humanity? I re- 
ply that God is essentially and simply just that,” says 
Frank Carleton Doan.*? “God and the world are not 
distinct in kind,” thinks Professor Simon N. Patten.?* 
A noted writer in a British magazine says that the 
church of today “is developing a worship of humantty.”** 
A writer in The Journal of Religion points out that 


2 


omen 


“many voices today join in the chorus: ‘Glory to man in 


the highest,’ and religion is regarded as a purely human 
undertaking, humanly initiated and humanly consum- 


24 The Christian Register, March 13, 1919, 

25 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 537. 

26 The same, p. 511. 

27 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 638. 

28 The same, 1910, p. 254. 

29 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1914, p. 155 ff. 

30 Humanity at the Cross Roads, 1915, pp. 174, 184. 

31 Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, vol. I, p. 285. 

82 In his book, Religion and the Modern Mind; quoted The 
Princeton Theological Review, 1910, p. 168. 

83 The Social Basis of Religion, p. 81. 

34 The Biblical World, May, 1917, p. 300. 


72 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


mated. Thus religion avoids scholastic theology and be- 
comes quite democratic. For God the King is over- 
thrown; and positivism [modernism] does not dally long 
with the fancy of God as president.” “Our city has a 
personality,’ says Professor Edward Scribner Ames; 
“each state has an individuality, and every nation is 
personified through a definite face and figure. Is it not 
just as natural to sum up the meaning of the whole of 
life in the person and image of God??? The modern- 
ism of the more radical type regards God as wholly im- 
+ manent in human life here and now, and as having no 
other existence than as a guiding principle of human life. 


All this means, as Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of 
the University of Michigan, has pointed out, that man- — 
kind, in so far as it has been religiously modernized, “is 
outgrowing theism [1. e., the belief in God] in a gentle 
and steady way until it ceases to have any clear mean- 
ing.” With the fading of this belief, this writer says, 
“man will be forced to acknowledge that he is an earth- - 
child whose drama has meaning only upon earth’s bos- 
om.’ To those who entertain such views “God be- 
comes a mere figure of speech,” to quote Professor 
George R. Dodson, of Washington University. It has 
become fashionable in our time, says this author, “to 
\ disguise a practical atheism under theistic phrases’’?* 
The God of modernism is not the real power controlling 
the universe, God is considered a mere idea, a symbol 
for certain facts of human experience. The full-fledged 
modernism is atheistic. And we are seriously told by 
leading representatives of religious liberalism, that the 
question of atheism is an entirely secondary matter., 
Since all doctrine is considered non-vital, the doctrine of 


35 The New Orthodoxy, p. 50. 
36 The Next Step in Religion, p. 127. 
387 The Christian Register, October 2, 1919, p. 15. 





GODLESS MODERN RELIGION 73 


God must share the common fate. “Liberalism is build- 
ing a religion that would not be shaken even if the very 
thought of God were to pass away,” says the Unitarian 
theologian Curtis W. Reese.*® 

It is seen, then, that we have fallen upon days when 
the confession of belief in God often has no real mean- 
ing, or it may have a meaning that is altogether unac- 
ceptable. 

To know whether the profession of belief in God is 
more than empty words, it is necessary to ask for defini- 
tions. Often it is the case that persons of liberal trend 
object to the request for a definition. They, in many 
instances, refuse to let you know what they are talking 
about.. They take the position that one view of God is 
about as good as another and it matters little what con- 
ception of God is accepted. A certain writer, in answer 
to this opinion, says poignantly: “When we say, ‘Oh, 
yes, we both believe in God, to me He is Life Force; to 
you Jehovah,’ we know in our hearts that we are simply 
conniving at the draining of all definite meaning from 
the word, in order to confuse the issue and keep the 
peace.’’*® If one comes to believe that there is an inher- 
ent force in matter as we find it, and that this immanent 
life-force is the source of all potencies, then there is no 
God, and there is no use concerning one’s self about 
Him. Professor George R. Dodson has well said, a 
minister or professor who holds, as some do today, that 
God is a concept of the mind, and nothing more, “should 
state his position without camouflage. He should say 
to the laymen: ‘You are wrong in your faith. God is 
nothing objective. He is merely an idea in the mind. 
He does not exist, although for pragmatic [practical] 
purposes it is well for you to act as if He did.’”*° 


38 Unity, August 12, 1920, p. 329. 
39 The Unpopular Review, July-September, 1918, p. 97. 
40 The Christian Register, June 17, 1920, p. 15. 


74 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Again this writer says: 


Now it is open to any man to use language as he pleases; he 
‘may keep the name of religion for human strivings when he has 
ceased to believe in God; he may even use the name of God when 
he means nothing more than a blind, groping cosmic energy or a 
concept of the mind. But if his sincere purpose be to promote 
clearness of thought and mutual understanding, it would seem to 
be better to frankly avow atheism than to dress it in religious garb. 
If there really is no God...... if we are being pushed up and on by 
some blind, groping, cosmic force...... by all means let us know it 
and endure it as well as we can. The last thing we desire is to be 


deceived. 


Is it not an appalling fact that the more radical lib- 
eralism politely bows God out of existence? For insti- 
tutions, sailing under a theological or churchly flag, to 
spread practical atheism may be regarded as unobjec- 
tionable from the modern liberalistic viewpoint. Con- 
sidered from the Biblical point of view it is decidedly 
immoral in character, as will be further shown elsewhere. 
Practical atheism in the seminaries means not only dis- 
aster to the church, but to society and the state as well. 


VIll 


MEL Ee BIBLICAL VERSUS THE MODERN VIEW 
ORGRRAY ER 


modern conception of it there is a vital difference. 

The Scriptures teach that God, the Creator and 
Ruler of the world, hears and answers prayer. Besides 
God’s answer to particular petitions, the greatest benefit 
is derived from prayer-fellowship with God. Prayer is 
laying hold of the fountain of strength that is in Him. 
True prayer not only moves God but it moves man 
through divine power. Prayer, particularly the secret 
prayer, is, besides the use of God’s Word, the greatest 
of the means of grace. 

Prayer may consist, then, of petition or praise, or it 
may be the still secret prayer of the heart. True prayer 
is a child-like thing and yet it must be learned in the 
school of the Holy Spirit. It is communion with God 
on the ground of the Atonement of Christ. The princi- 
pal elements of the higher type of prayer are self-sur- 
render, the desire that the self-life cease and God have 
His way. True prayer is a pestilence to doubt regarding 
God’s Word and to spiritual uncertainty. The truly 
prayerful heart is in a state of blessed experience of the 
Spiritual realities. 

Modernism, on the other hand, denies the manifesta- 
tion of supernatural divine power in prayer. It denies 
that God is moved by prayer; in fact it denies that there 
is a God who answers prayer. When modernists tell us 
that prayer moves man, they do not mean that man is 
moved by divine power, but by power which he himself 


B tiecers the Bible doctrine of prayer and the 


76 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


possesses and which he exercises in prayer. “The men- 
tal state of peace, exultation, and resolution which issue 
upon the exercise of prayer are due to the release of con- 
scious tension,”? says Professor Theodore Gerald Soares 
of the University of Chicago. Man’s hope and courage, 
they say, are hightened by his expectation of help 
through prayer, therefore he is benefited by it. The 
modernist prays not with the expectation of being heard 
but in order that his hope and courage may be increased 
through the exercise of prayer. | 


Modernists have given some curious definitions of 
prayer. According to President G. Stanley Hall, of — 
Clark University, prayer is communion “with the deep- 
er racial self within us.”?. Another theological writer 
thinks, prayer is “the conversation of the lower with the 
higher self.”* George Burman Foster says: “The only 
prayer which we have a moral right to pray is precisely 
the prayer which after all we ourselves must answer.” 
The purpose of prayer, this author thinks, is “to fill us 
with hope and confidence and courage, so that we do 
in our own strength what men so often idly entrusted 
to the gifts or to the activities of some god-spirit apart 
from life.’’4 


The question is here again pertinent. Is there no 
other way by which modernists may obtain hope and 
confidence than by praying, when they admit that there 
will be no answer to prayer except such as emanates 
from themselves? Is such prayer not a strange and un- 
reasonable attempt to this end? It is indeed, and is so 
recognized by an increasing number of modernists. 
Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Harvard, is righ? 


1 A Guide to the Study cf the Christian Religion, p. 672. 

2 Jesus, the Christ, in the Light cf Psychology, vol. II, p. 504. - 
3 The Biblical World, June, 1917, p. 385. 

+ The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 

Pp. 4o 


MODERNIST SELF-EXALTATION 77 


when he says, liberalists “have minimized the function 
of worship.”> Says a Unitarian preacher: 

I thought we Unitarians had reached the conclusion that things 
are done in this world by human effort and not by divine inter- 
vention....Once we transfer men’s efforts from seeking help from 
heaven, whence no help comes, to a firm and confident reliance 
upon ourselves, success is assured.6 

Professor Edward Scribner Ames, in his radically 
liberalistic book, The New Orthodoxy, points out that 
the divine is now believed to be within the human. The 
immanence of God renders the old view of prayer and 
worship inconsistent. “For the modern man_ standing 
erect in his pride of power, the old ceremonial full of © 
passivity and surrender is the symbol of a dying age.’” 
Considered from the viewpoint of modern liberalism 
Professor Ames is right. If God is not a personal Being, 
but an immanent force, and if man “in his pride of pow- 
er” needs no God, then he ought to cease to worship. 
Prayer and worship are inconsistent from this viewpoint. 

It has been shown elsewhere that the Ethical Cul- 
ture Societies have discarded prayer while liberalistic 
churches have retained it in their public meetings. These 
churches would lose the last vestige of an excuse for 
maintaining the name of a church if they discarded pray- 
er entirely. Both the atheistic Unitarian preacher re- 
ferred to in a preceding paragraph, and Professor George 
Burman Foster followed the custom of offering prayer, 
when they conducted religious meetings. Their excuse 
is that belief in God is not essential to prayer. It must 
be admitted that it is the natural thing for man to wor- 
ship something. If he refuse to worship God he will 
find himself worshiping the creature. Idol worshipers 
may get some satisfaction from their worship. Need it 
be said that this cannot be compared with true Christian 

5 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 8. 


8 The Christian Register, June 13, 1918, p. 5. 
1 The New Orthodoxy, p. 117f. Italics mine. 


78 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


worship — that there is a world of difference between 
prayer that is practically atheistic (questioning the ex- 
istence of a God who answers prayer) and the true wor- 
ship of God? 

Religious liberalists say, then, as a rule, that they 
derive benefit from prayer and are therefore justified in 
offering prayer. But the question remains, can there be 
an acceptable excuse for addressing their prayer to God 


when they deny that there is a God who answers pray- 


er? Obviously the representatives of liberalism have 
not found it possible to formulate prayers to be address- 


ed to the object of their worship, hence they address — 


their prayers to God. If they addressed them to the 


powers from whence they expect benefit through prayer, 


the unreasonableness of liberalistic prayer would read- 
ily be recognized. In fact, it is strange indeed that the 
liberal theologians expect us to accept the modern view 
of prayer and yet keep on praying. It is as‘if a physi- 
cian would disclose to his patient the great value and 
the true nature of bread pills. While it is true that for 
certain nervous disorders bread pills may prove benefi- 
cial to those who take them for medicine, no normal per- 
son would continue to use bread pills after he has learn- 
ed what they are made of. Unless there is an Objective 
Reality to which prayer is addressed —a God who hears 
and answers prayer — it will be the unthinking that may 
be found praying. 

When it is recalled that “the foundation truth of the 
new theology is the fundamental unity of God and man,” 
as an eminent new theology writer says, and that the 
modern immanent God is identified with man, it is clear-’ 
ly seen, that considered from this viewpoint, George 


Burman Foster is right when he Says, nO prayers are an- | 


swered except by man. In the last analysis liberalistic 
worship is the worship of man, or of humanity, under the 
guise of the worship of God. “The non-human world is un- 


MAN AS AN OBJECT OF WORSHIP 79 


worthy of our worship,” says Bertrand Russell,® indi- 
cating that he with many others has made humanity his 
god. But is man worthy of worship? Is it reasonable 
that he place himself on the pedestal, “standing erect 
in the pride of his power,” and worshiping himself? Is 
not man, in fact, the most needy creature? Is not man’s 
self-worship a striking proof of his own depravity and 
of his blindness in things spiritual? What excuse is there 
in our enlightened land for the idolatrous worship of 
humanity ?— How exceedingly small is man when he 
consents to become the object of worship. 

Deny the existence of a personal, almighty God and 
there can be only idolatrous worship, degrading in its 
effects and unworthy of intelligent people, 


8 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1913, p. 53. 


7 
Z 
= hoa 


IX 


THE DEITY OF CHRIST VERSUS THE MODERN 
DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINITY OF MAN 


no place for the supernatural. It denies that there 

ever was a miracle. You would suppose, there- 
fore, that the divinity of Christ is also denied. Accord- 
ing to liberal authors this is a wrong guess, however. 
We are told that Christ is divine, since all men and 
everything that exists are divine. “Divine and human 
are recognized as truly one,” says President McGiffert, 
of Union Theological Seminary, “Christ therefore, if hu- 
man, must be divine, as all men are.’* Another writer 
says: “Divine immanence means that we look for 
Christ’s divinity in His humanity, not outside it.”? Ac- 
cordingly Christ was divine because He was human. 
Humanity is considered divine, since it is included in 
nature and, according to the doctrine of divine imma- 
nence, God and nature are essentially one. Therefore 
Christ, as well as every creature in the universe, is sup- 
posed to be divine. “Christ is essentially no more divine 
than we are or than nature is,” says Dr. McGiffert.? 
The question is here pertinent, Do the representatives of 
modern theology not see that they in this way, deprive 
the thought of Christ’s divinity of all meaning? Are 
they not aware of the absurdity of teaching His divinity 


Dee modern doctrine of the immanence of God has 


in the sense that He is divine because He is supposed to 


be the product of the universal world energy? The 

meanest creature in the universe is, considered from 

this viewpoint, divine in the same sense. If this be the 
1 McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 207. 


2 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1914, p. 739. 
3 The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 208. 


DENIAL OF THE INCARNATION 81 


true view of the matter, why speak of the divinity of 
Christ at all? 

Strange as it may appear, the theologians who reject 
the deity of Christ nevertheless teach the incarnation of 
God (in Christ), that is to say, His becoming a man. 
They do not accept the Scriptural doctrine of the incar- 
nation but advance a new dogma born of their own fan- 
cy. According to William Newton Clarke and other 
liberalistic theologians who hold the dogma of divine 
immanence, the divine and human nature are, as has 
been pointed out, essentially alike; there is no real dif- 
ference. It follows that every man, being of divine na- 
ture, is an incarnation of God, some men in greater, oth- 
ers in less degree, and there is no other incarnation save 
that which takes place in every member of the human 


family. “The incarnation of God in Christ is nothing 


else than the incarnation of God in all men carried to 


a superlative degree.”* It simply is the presence of God 


humanity. 
Furthermore the incarnation of God means, in liberal- 


istic teaching, the evolution of humanity. ‘God is con- 


9 66 


tinually incarnating himself in human life;”’ “all human 
history represents the incarnation or manifestation of the 
eternal Son or Christ of God,” says the liberalistic Brit- 
ish theologian R. J. Campbell. Christ’s incarnation is 
considered an anticipation of what humanity, in the 
course of the evolutionary process, will become in the 
future. Hence there is nothing miraculous about the in- 
carnation of Christ. Man is God-like, says Dr. Daniel 
Webster Kurtz, of McPherson College, this “makes the 
incarnation the most simple and natural thing in relig- 
ion.”® The more radical modernists say, since God’s in- 


4 Clark, Henry W., Liberal Orthodoxy, 1914, p. 285. This is 
not the view of Dr. Clark (a British theologian) however. 


5 The New Theology, p. 106. 
6 An Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines of Faith, p. 26. 


ie 
bw 


82 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


carnation in Christ does not essentially differ from His 
incarnation in all men, it follows that it was not volun- 
tary, and therefore not for redemption. It was the re- 
sult of natural causes and took place because natural law 
works of necessity. It did not have its occasion in sin. 
Christ was the product of the world, not a Savior come 
from outside the world. In other words, the incarnation 
in the modern sense is, as concerns Christ and all other 
men, a necessary occurrence in the evolutionary process. 


In short, under various ventures of camouflage a quite 
new picture of Christ is offered us by modern liberalism. 
Modern theology has bent its energies upon discredit- 
ing the doctrine of the deity of Christ. The radical 
higher criticism, indeed, has this very purpose, namely 
to disprove and discredit His deity. This, at least is the - 
opinion of the liberalistic theologian K. C. Anderson, of 
Dundee, Scotland, who says: “Not designedly, indeed, 
but really though unconsciously, the purpose of the crit- 
icism of the New Testament, especially in Germany has 
been to undermine the doctrine of the divinity of its 
central figure and to discover a human Jesus.”” “The 
bond of union among us all,” said a Unitarian professor 
referring to liberalistic, creedless churches, “is the fight 
against the deity of Jesus Christ.” 


The Bible teaches the deity of Jesus Christ. He was 
the God-man, very God and very man. The divine and 
the human nature were united in Him. The virgin birth 
of our Lord is one of the fundamental facts of Christian- 
ity. His pre-existence —i. e. His existence before His 
first coming into the world —follows as a matter of 
course and is clearly taught in Scripture. With the te- 
jection of the Bible as God’s Word, liberalism has con- 
sequently also rejected the deity of Christ. “The Bible 
having been lost,” says Professor Benjamin B. Warfield, 


7 The Monist, 1915, p. 54. 


IMAGINARY PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 83 


of Princeton Theological Seminary, “the Christ of the 
Bible has naturally been lost also.”* The Christ of the 
Bible is not acceptable to the modernists; and they ad- 
mit that their merely human Christ is not the one por- 
trayed in Scripture.4 At the same time they cannot deny 
that the Bible is the only source of our knowledge of 
Christ. So radical a critic as George Burman Foster 
says: “If Jesus did not say these things [which are re- 
ported in Scripture] we do not know what he did say.’® 
Dr. F. R. Tennant, a British theologian, says on this 
point: 

If the historical value of the Gospels be seriously question- 
able [as the modern critics assert], if the portraiture of Christ 
therein contained be untrustworthy, and the traditional interpreta- 
tion of His person be gravely in error, then the fundamental con- 
victions of Christians are threatened, and dogmas so essential as 
that of the Incarnation, not to speak of the dependent doctrines of 
the Trinity, the Atonement, etc., and also the “sure and certain 
hope of a resurrection” become insecure. — Personal religion, and 
not merely a theological tenet, is at stake with such men and women 
as take that interest in theological matters which becomes the in- 
telligent Christian.1° 

It is important to remember that the modern liberal 
critics not only reject the Bible as a supernatural revela- 
tion of God, but they disown all that is supernatural. 
They deny the history of Jesus in so far as it partakes 
of the supernatural; they deny His supernatural birth, 
His miracles and His resurrection. They accept only a 
human Jesus and consider everything beyond that as 
mythical and unreliable. They have undertaken the 
task of separating the natural and supernatural in the 
Gospel account of Jesus. But they have found it impos- 
sible to draw the line between that which from their 
own point of view is acceptable and that which is not 


8 The Princeton Theological Review, 1910, p. 174. 
9 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence. 


10 The Constructive Quarterly, December, 1919, p.. 703. 


84 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM — 


acceptable. In Jesus’ life and teaching the supernatural 
is intertwined with the natural in a way that-it is irh- 
possible to construct a purely human Jesus from the 
Scriptural account. The supernatural is an inseparable 
part of it. To attempt a separation is to discredit the 
whole. 

If the contents of the Gospels, in so far as then deal 
with’ or involve the supernatural, be mere fiction, it 
would be asking too much of thinking persons to accept 
the rest as historical. The four Gospels would have to 
be considered quite untrustworthy. The amazing confi- 


dence of the higher critics in their own ability and wis-_ 


dom is clearly evident from the fact that they believe 


that they know more about the life and teachings of our. 


Lord than did the writers of the Gospels. Even if we 
accepted their denial of the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
we should have to tell them that their position is unrea- 


sonable. If the supernatural in the Scriptures were un- 


acceptable and the Gospel accounts contained fiction as 
well as fact, the critics would be undertaking the impos- 
sible in their attempt to separate the two. 

The human Jesus of modern theology, then, is ‘not 
the Jesus of the New Testament Scriptures, and since 
the Scriptures are the only source of our knowledge of 
Jesus, the “modernized” Jesus never had any existence 


except in the fancy of liberalistic theologians; he is only 


a fiction of unbelieving speculation. “This merely hu- 
man Christ,” says Professor C. W. Hodge, of Princeton 
Theological Seminary, “is not the Christ of the only 
sources of information concerning Jesus which we pos- 
sess; it is not the Christ of the Christian church; it is 
not a Christ of whose existence we have any valid evi- 
dence whatever. It is an imaginary picture, the product 


of emotion and fancy and of a naturalistic philosophy of 


immanence.’’!! 


5 The Princeton Theological Review, 1915, p. 129. 


A MERELY HUMAN JESUS. 85 


An increasing number of modern liberalists realize 
this to be a fact. “Recent [radical] critics have declared 
that the Jesus of liberal Protestantism is also a fiction,” 
says Dr. Douglas C. Macintosh.1? Professor Warfield 
says: 

Drews [a radical religious liberalist] is perfectly right in in- 
sisting that it is this [Biblical] divine-human Jesus or nothing; 
that there is not a particle of historical justification for the merely 
human Jesus of the ‘Liberal’ theology, and that it is a degradation 
of Christianity and a deadly blow at religion to find in this purely 
imaginary, merely human Jesus the central point and impelling 
force for all our religious life.13 


At first the critics asserted that the Biblical account 
of Christ’s miracles and of His sayings, in so far as they 
involve the supernatural, is mythical and untrue. What 
He sad about His supernatural person and work and 
about the coming end of the world, etc., did not suit 
their fancy, hence they rejected it as mere fiction. But 
some of the critics have, as intimated in a preceding par- 
agraph, been led to see that this position is untenable. 
They now say that it must be admitted that Jesus said 
such things and made such claims as the writers of the 
Gospel report, but being a mere man, these sayings show 
that he was greatly mistaken. In fact, some of the crit- 
ics say that he was mentally deranged—he suffered 
from a mild form of insanity. Such is the blasphemous 
opinion of De Loosten, Hirsch, and Binet-Sangle who 
accuse Jesus of mental derangement in one form or oth- 
er. It must be admitted that a mere man speaking as 
Jesus did, would have to be adjudged either a deceiver 
or mentally unsound. If He was not the One that He 
said He was, His enemies would have been right when 
they said: “We have a law and by our law he ought to 
die, because he made himself the Son of God” (John 19: 


12 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 108. 
18 The Princeton Theological Review, 1913, p. 299. 


86 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


7). Professor Albert Parker Fitch, who does not accept 
Christ’s deity, writes: “Jesus said: Read me into God. 
So far as men can know and understand God, what I am 
he is like.’”!4 But unless Jesus was what He claimed to 
be, such language would be quite unacceptable and of- 
fensive. It would be an evidence of mental derangement 
or serious moral failing. | 

More and more the representatives of modernism ac- 
cept the view that it is enough to consider Jesus a mere 
ideal and that it is unessential whether He ever lived, or 
whether the person of Jesus is a myth. Professor Ezra 
Albert Cook, of the Congregational College of Canada, | 
Montreal, is one of the numerous writers who defend 
this opinion.* We are asked to believe that if Jesus of. 
Nazareth never lived — that is to say, if the whole Gos- 
pel story were either fable, or fraud, or both — we could 
nevertheless adhere to the Christian faith without seri- 
ous loss. . | 

The more moderate critics, accepting from the Gos- 
pel account that which fits into their theological scheme, 
make Jesus a religious genius or a religious hero. He 
was not essentially different from other men, they say, 
but his religious nature was better developed: In other 
words, he represented perfection of manhood. “Jesus 
attained in his character all that God ever intended or ex- 
pected of his Son, Man,” says Daniel Webster Kurtz, 
and “perfect manhood is divine Sonship.”1® In other 
words, the divinity of Jesus is merely true humanity. 
This is the view of the majority of representatives of 
modern theology. It is nothing more than an excuse for 
the Biblical doctrine of Christ’s deity, and a poor excuse, 
at that; it is a mere husk that has been deprived of its 
kernel, 


14 Can the Church Survive in the Changing Order? p. 66. 
15 In his Christian Faith for Men of Today. 


THE DESTRUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 87 


This view involves also a denial of Jesus’ sinlessness. 
If He was only humanly perfect and attained to this hu- 
man perfection through development as a religious gen- 
ius, He was not without sin. This is freely admitted by 
some of the liberal theologians. A liberalistic writer 
says: 


Tempted at all points, as we are, and not without sin would be 
the logical result from the doctrine of the complete humanity of 
Jesus. From this conclusion the Unitarian does not shrink. He is 
ready to admit with the utmost frankness that in all probability 
Jesus had his moments of opposition to the divine will which con- 
stitutes the attitude of sin.17 


Professor Rudolf Eucken says rightfully concerning 
the new theology view of Jesus: 


If Jesus therefore is not God, if Christ is not the second person 
in the Trinity, then he is man; not a man like any average man 
among ourselves, but still a man. We can therefore honor him as 
a leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot directly bind ourselves to 
him nor root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to him uncondi- 
tionally. Still less can we make him the center of a cult. To do 
so from our point of view would be nothing else than an intolerable 
deification of a human being.18 


Dr. K. C. Anderson says: 


But the Christ of the church is not such a Jesus [as the critics 
would have us believe]. The important question is whether the 
Christian church can make the great change of belief which the 
acceptance of such a Jesus would involve and remain the Christian 
church. If the critic’s evidence for his thesis is so overwhelming 
that it must be accepted—well, then it must; but it is important 
that the churches of Christendom should realize the kind of Jesus 
the critics are presenting them with, and the vast revolution in be- 
lief which it involves. 

Christianity from the beginning has been conceived as a re- 
demptive scheme, the good news of a divine being coming down 
from heaven to rescue fallen man, the Christ or Savior not being 
a member of the fallen race, but apart from it and superior to it. 


16 An Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines of Faith, p. 27. 
17 Emerson, Unitarian Thought, p. 165. 
18 Quoted, The Princeton Theological Review, 1913, p. 339. 


3g MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


To make the Christ or Savior a member of the race, no matter how 
specially endowed with moral and spiritual qualities, is to alter the 
whole conception and to tear out the heart of the evangelic story. 
The Christian church has never yet consented.to put its Christ into 
the same category as the prophets of the Old Testament or the 
philosophers of Greece, but this is just what will have to be done 
if the Jesus of the critics is to be accepted as the Christ. 


The triumph of liberalism is really a defeat, for it- means the 
destruction of Christianity as Christianity has been known in all 
ages of its history. If Jesus was a man as Socrates, Alexander, 
Isaiah, and Jeremiah were men, then the whole Christian world has 
been under a delusion. The discovery that Jesus was a man merely 
as those named were men, would be regarded as destructive to 
Christianity just as would the discovery that Jesus never lived 
at all. It would be the destruction of Christianity as Christianity | 
has been understood by the great saints and theologians of the 
past.19 ) 








19 The Monist, 1915, pp. 55-57. 


Xx 


SIN AND SALVATION 


in the last analysis “enmity against God.” The 

natural state of man is one of total depravity. This 
does not mean that the sinner is as bad as he can be. 
It means that the corrupting character and guilt of sin 
are such that no mere reformation or improvement, no 
development of that which man may naturally possess 
can save him. Salvation requires a supernatural regen- 
eration on the ground of the atonement of Christ. God 
Himself had no other way of salvation for sinful man 
than through the sacrifice of Calvary — His own self- 
sacrifice in His Son. 


ihe Scriptures teach that sin involves guilt; it is 


Corresponding to the guilt of sin is the wrath of God 
against sin. Clearly as the Scriptures teach that God is 
love, just so clearly they teach also His holiness and 
righteousness. The wrath of God is the necessary con- 
sequence of His holiness and of the guilt of human sin. 
God loves the sinner but cannot save him except through 
the atonement of Christ. If the sinner spurns the offer 
of salvation “the wrath of God remaineth on him.” The 
objections of modern liberalism to the thought of God’s 
wrath are due to the denial of the truth of the Gospel: 
that Christ who is very God gave His life and died, 
“the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” 

Liberal modern theology leaves no room for a real 
conception of sin. The doctrines of divine immanence 
and of universal divine Fatherhood take the seriousness 
out of the thought of sin. The more advanced liberal- 
istic theologians consider sin a necessary incident of ev- 


90 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


olution, a mere stage in the development of humanity, 
the growing pains of the soul, etc. A clergyman, writing 
in The Hibbert Journal, confesses frankly that sin is ~ 
meaningless to him. Dean Fenn, of the Divinity School, 
Harvard University, says, in an article on Modern Lib- 
eralism: “And what of human sin? Here more than 
anywhere else the weakness of modern liberalism shows 
itself. It may be conceded that traditional [conserva- 
tive, orthodox] theology made too much of sin, but 
surely that was better than to make light of it.”* R. J. 
Campbell, the author of The New Theology, said in a 
sermon, the lowest vices and most hideous crimes are a 
blind and mistaken searching after the divine in us. A 
certain secular writer has well said: 

Certain of our wise men of today have shaded away sin till it 
becomes an expression of temperament. They tell us that we sin 
because our grandfather sinned and because our home is situated in 
the wrong block. These are clever words of clever comforters, and 
surely they ought to wipe away forever the tears from our eyes. 
But they do not speak to human need. They leave the sinning one 
to continue in all despair. He does not ask that his sin be explained © 
away. He wishes forgiveness and a fresh start. In the Book, 
which is not read as once it was, there are no soft words about sin. 
But the way out is shown. 

Albrecht Ritschl and many others of the more mod- 
erate representatives of modern theology teach that the 
atonement of Christ affected man alone and did not 
change God’s attitude to sinful man. The one and only 
purpose of Christ’s life and death, they say, was to show 
God’s love. To accept the Atonement means, accord- 
ing to this view, simply to believe that God is love. If 
man could have believed in the love of God without 
Christ’s death on Calvary, no Atonement would, ac-, 
cording to the new theology, have been necessary. His 
death, they tell us, is not important in itself but must be 
viewed as a part of His life, and His life has value for us 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 516. Italics mine. 


UNREAL VIEW OF THE ATONEMENT 91 


only as an example. “Theology has made a fundamental 
mistake,” says Walter Rauschenbusch, “in treating the 
atonement as something distinct” and not “as an integral 
part of his life.’ And again: “His death is a matter al- 
most neglible in the work of salvation.”? Christ’s 
death was, according to modernism, simply a testimony 
and seal for His teaching. It was nothing more than 
the death of a martyr. His life, His teaching and His 
death were merely a revelation and exhibition of God’s 
love. “Christ was not a Sin Offering to propitiate God,” 
says Daniel Webster Kurtz, “His part in salvation was 
to reveal God’s love and forgiveness and grace.” — “His 
death was the climax of his revealing work of God’s 
love.”* This is the so-called moral influence theory of 
the Atonement. 

Modern theology makes much of the fatherhood of 
God. For God’s fatherhood in the Scriptural sense it 
has ‘substituted a new doctrine which exalts God’s love 
at the expense of His righteousness and holiness. The 
liberalistic view of God’s fatherhood leaves out of con- 
isderation the fact that, unless God is truth and holiness 
as well as love, He cannot be love in any real sense. 
This new doctrine ignores “the sinfulness of sin.” It 
stands for an indulgent but soft and weak fatherhood of 
God; too weak to deal appropriately with sin; too senti- 
mental to imsist on the sinner taking the only way of 
salvation from sin. But all the glib modern talk of God’s 
love, which ignores the Scripture teaching of sin and 
salvation, is nothing beyond a sickly sentimentalism 
which has never saved a soul nor ever will. This mod- 
ern supposed love of God is indeed not the love of an 
intelligent moral being. 

The moral influence theory of the Atonement makes 
Christ a Savior by teaching, not a Redeemer by atone- 


2 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 260. 
3 An Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines of Faith, p. 30f. 


92 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ment. Modern theology conceives of Christ as a Savior 
in an unreal sense. It does not teach salvation by 
Christ’s work of redemption and of regenerating the 
heart, but by following His example. Considered from 
this viewpoint salvation is not the work of Christ but 
our own work. And since it is supposed that Christ is 
not the Savior in any real sense, it is an entirely sec- 
ondary matter who He was. This has been taught by 
many representatives of modernism. Professor George 
Cross, of Rochester Theological Seminary, for example, 
says, the theology which he represents is to develop a 
new doctrine of salvation in which “questions of Christ’s 
pre-existence and post-existence will be laid aside as un- — 
practical and unprofitable.’* 

A pertinent example of the treatment of the doctrine ~ 
of the Atonement in modern theology is offered by Wal- 
ter Rauschenbusch, in his book A Theology for the So- 
cial Gospel. This author devotes about forty pages to 
the subject of the Atonement. He addresses ‘himself to 
the task to show that Jesus died for the sins of the world, © 
not however in the Scriptural sense but rather in the 
sense that every one who suffered innocently and died a 
martyr, suffered and died for the sins of the world. But, 
if this be the right view, the question is in order, why is 
it that this author gives so much space to the subject of 
the Atonement? What is there in his view of the Atone- 
ment that would justify his extensive treatment of this 
question? Why should theology concern itself particu- 
larly with the Atonement and the death of Christ, if He 
merely died the death of a martyr? This is precisely the 
point that Rauschenbusch fails to clear up. The unreal- 
ity and artificial character of this liberal teaching on the. 
Atonement is clearly apparent from Rauschenbusch’s 
treatise. Having labored to show that Jesus died for 
the sins of the world he says, the death of Jesus is “a 


4 The American Journal of Theology, 1915, p. 43. 


SALVATION BY CHARACTER. 93 


matter almost negligible in the work of salvation.” And 
again he says: “What the death of Jesus now does for 
us, the death of the prophets did for him.’”® After all is 
said, the fact remains that the denial of the Atonement, 
as taught in Scripture, not only takes the heart out of 
the Gospel message but it utterly distorts the picture of 
Jesus. Deny that His agony and His feeling of being 
forsaken of God were the result of His sin-bearing, and 
you are forced to admit that Socrates who innocently 
suffered death calmly and without agony, was greater 
as a martyr, 

. Hand in hand, with the rejection of the thought of 
Christ as the Redeemer goes the liberalistic doctrine of 
salvation by character. This doctrine means that a good 
moral character, such as respectable people are supposed 
to have, is sufficient for salvation. It is a doctrine for 
those who feel that their own righteousness fills all re- 
quirements. Religious liberalism has no message for 
the sinner, be he respectable or not, who realizes that he 
is lost. The Gospel message, on the other hand, is for 
him who is “down and out” as well as for the one of 
respectable character, provided that they realize their 
need of salvation. The offer is to all. The vilest of sin- 
ners may come and accept it by believing that Christ, 
his substitute, died for him and shed His blood for his 
sin. The guilt and stain of sin is cancelled and the new 
nature implanted in him. 

Salvation from sin is a free gift of grace. It is some- 
times said that faith is a condition which the sinner must 
fulfill in order to be saved. In fact, however, justifying 
faith is but the acceptance of that which God is offering 
without money and without price. Repentance of sin 1s 
necessarily included in seeking salvation. Unless the 
whole attitude of the seeking sinner is one of repentance, 
his desire to be saved is unreal. The sinner may come 


5 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 262. 


94 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


as he is and claim Christ as his personal Savior from sin 
and from hell. As a rule the greatest hindrance to the 
personal saving work of Christ on the part of the re- 
pentant sinner is the subtle unbelief which would assist 
Him somehow in this work. Many a soul persists in the 
attempt to become worthy of salvation by self-effort. 
But it is only as the sinner realizes that his own effort 
accomplishes less than nothing, that it is only a hin- 
drance to the real work; it is when he is willing to accept 
the work of salvation which Christ has finished on the 
cross — it is then that salvation for him becomes a fact. 

Singular it is that modern theology overlooks the 
patent fact that the moral influence theory of the Atone- 
ment is contradictory in itself. Unless a real atonement, | 
as the Scriptures teach, was necessary, the question is in 
order, Why should God permit the best and holiest One 
of all men to die an ignominious death on the cross? 
How could this be considered an exhibition of God’s 
love? Even if Christ’s deity be recognized, His death 
on the cross was uncalled-for as a mere proof of God’s 
love. If He died for sinners merely in the sense that 
sinners put Him to death and to give an example of mar- 
tyrdom, Professor Rauschenbusch would indeed be right 
when he says, “his death is a matter almost negligible 
in the work of salvation.” In that case it would be im- 
possible to believe that God had no better way to show 
His love than by permitting the tragedy of Calvary. In 
other words, unless Christ’s death had a great purpose, 
besides showing God’s love, it was not even an exhibi- 
tion of His love. It is clear then, that the moral! influ- 
ence theory is an unacceptable substitute for the Scrip-, 
tural doctrine of the Atonement. The modern theory 
is, in fact, a denial of it; it is a counterfeit of the Bib- 
lical doctrine. As a matter of fact the Bible doctrine of 
the Atonement is a stumbling block to the self-suffi- 
cient, self-righteous, carnal, modern mind? It is unpopu- 


INDIVIDUAL SALVATION 95 


lar among those who would tune their faith to the spirit 
of the age. This is a poor excuse, however, for invent- 
ing a doctrine which denies the Atonement and intro- 
ducing the new doctrine under the old name. There 
can be no valid ground for such counterfeiting. 

Liberal leaders have asserted that the Biblical doc- 
trine of salvation is unacceptable to them because, so 
they tell us, it concerns itself only with the individual, 
and not with society and its great needs. We are told 
that the modern mind will not accept an individualistic 
gospel and that religion must be socialized. Salvation 
must be interpreted in terms of social service and social 
reconstruction. The representatives of religious liberal- 
ism ignore the fact that the greatest factor for substan- 
tially improving things on earth is the personal] in- 
ward transformation through the Gospel. This is the 
great power to produce moral character without which 
true social improvement is impossible. There will al- 
ways be social improvement to the extent that the mes- 
sage of the Gospel is accepted and the precepts of the 
Gospel are lived. 

Furthermore, modernism overlooks the fact that per- 
sonal salvation is for the individual a far more important 
matter than the privilege to live in a socially improved 
society. It is more important to have the victory of the 
spirit through a personal relationship to God than to 
have one’s social and political and economic desires sat- 
isfied. And the thought that the world may be regen- 
erated through human instrumentality, or in other words, 
that conditions on earth may be improved to such ex- 
tent that men are no longer born in sin and do no longer 
need personal salvation through Jesus Christ — this 
thought is utterly fallacious. If individual reformation 
does not change the heart of the one who reforms, nei- 
ther will improvement of social conditions break the or- 
ganized power of evil that is manifest in the world. It 


96 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


is quite true that desirable reforms may oiten be ac- 


complished, but to reconstruct, or regenerate, the world 


through human instrumentality is impossible. It is not 
a man’s job, 

While these facts should not be lost sight of, it is on 
the other hand, as intimated in a preceding paragraph, 
just as important to remember that the Christian church, 
in so far as she fulfills her calling, is the light of the 
world and the salt of the earth. It is a matter of the 
utmost importance that the influence of a Christian’s 
life is what God has designed it to be. The fact that 


the world cannot be regenerated through human effort: 


can by no manner of means be interpreted to mean that 


the believer has no responsibility as to the temporal and © 


eternal well-being of his fellows. Biblical orthodoxy, 
unless it be unreal “dead” orthodoxy, manifests itself by 
a deep sense of responsibility toward those who need the 
Christian’s service. The Christian’s responsibility is as 
great as his opportunity for service. But to render such 
service effectively, the principle of separation from world- 
liness is essential. Worldly religiousness ceases to be 
the light of the world and the salt of the earth. 

A host of modern theology writers assure us that the 
great question that faces us is not personal salvation, 
but that the church must save herself by adopting a 
message that is acceptable to the modern mind. We are 
told that, unless the church succeeds in winning the 
leaders of modern world-thought, she is doomed. But 
“why should Christianity undertake to adapt itself to 
the modern world instead of laboring to adapt the world 
to itself? Is its task to be conformed to this world, and’ 
not rather to transform it? Is modern thought the 
standard of Christian truth, and not the reverse? Is not 


the whole undertaking an implicit denial of Christianity — 


as a revelation of truth?’’® It is in very deed, 
8 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 288. 


NATURALISM UNDER A RELIGIOUS CLOAK 97 


Here is manifest the fundamental contrast between 
Christianity and the new religion. Modernism is bound 
to win the favor of the world and, therefore to accommo- 
date itself to the prevailing world-thought. Its great 
task is supposed to be to modify and reconstruct the 
Christian message to make it conformable to the pre- 
vailing thought and spirit of the age. Professor H. C. 
Aickerman, of the Divinity School of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church at Nashotah, Wis., for example, says: 

The church of God in the world today must explain herself 
to this generation. The eternal truth must be seen with the eyes 
of the modern age. And to be seen correctly, or more correctly 
understood, her doctrines must be translated into the vital terms 
of the day. And this day is undoubtedly materialistic. Conse- 
quently the translation of doctrine must be in materialistic terms. 
— Such an applied Christianity must first become scientific in ex- 
pression. The theologian must learn how to think and express 
himself in materialistic terms.? 

Now to express religion, or salvation, in materialist- 
ic terms is to materialize it. Professor Ackerman is a 
representative of radical liberalism and is of the opinion 
that this is necessary to meet the demands of our age. 
Under liberalistic leadership our age, in the language of 
Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the University of Mich- 
igan, is ascending to “spiritualized naturalism.’® Natural- 
ism — which means practical atheism —is “spiritualized” ; 
it is given a religious cloak. 

There are other liberal theologians who do not advo- 
cate so radical a change; all representatives of modern- 
ism, however, are of the opinion that religious doctrine 
must adapt itself to our age, for, in their opinion, the 
church cannot hope to succeed, or even live, except by 
virtue of such change. In other words, the present ques- 
tion, as already said, is not one of personal or individual 
salvation, but of salvation for the church. But why 


7 The Biblical World, September, 1918, p. 197. Italics mine. 
8 The Next Step in Religion, p. 2. 


98 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


should the church be saved, if personal salvation is not 
needful? Would it not be more honorable for the church 
to die the death of the righteous than’to be turned into 
a social club or debating society? What right has a 
society of such character to the name of the Christian 
church? 

The modern idea of saving the church stands in the 
strongest possible contrast to the Bible teaching on the 
church and on salvation. Christianity, as represented 
by Christ and the apostles, and by the believers of all 
periods, considers it the church’s task to overcome the 
world, instead of accomodating herself to it. The 
Apostle Paul was beheaded, Peter was crucified, head 
downward, because they refused to make their message 
acceptable to the great world leaders. Ye noble army 
of Christian martyrs, look upon the latter-day modern- 
ized religious professors who for success, as the world 
counts success, are willing to renounce the truth for 
which you gave your lives. To win the favor of men 
they take their orders from the world. They believe 
that the church, in so far as she holds fast to the old 
faith, is destined to die. Granted for the sake of the ar- 
gument that they were right on this point, our griev- 
ance is that to abandon her message would for the 
church be nothing less than to commit an act of self- 
destruction — to die the death of a suicide. 

While our Lord, as we have seen, came to overcome 
the world and cared so little for world-thought that He 
made fishermen and tentmakers His first apostles, charg- 
ing them to preach the Gospel to the poor; while He 
instructed them to rely on supernatural aid in the great 
work to which they were called, and gave them to be- 
lieve that through Him they would be victorious and the 
cause would prosper though they died at the stake — 
the representatives of modern liberalism do not rely on 
supernatural help. Success, in their view, means social- 





SECULARIZATION OF THE MESSAGE 99 


ization — wholesale world-improvement, and this they 
believe impossible through the old Christian message; 
therefore they have abandoned it. Now this seculariza- 
tion of the church’s message is not, as they would have 
us believe, its crown of glory; it is the cause of the im- 
potency and decay of the modernized church — its burn- 
ing shame. The denial of the Christian message of per- 
sonal salvation from sin makes the existence of the 
church superfluous. 


XI 


TWO TYPES OF MODERN THEOLOGY 
COMPARED 


higher authority indeed than the Scriptures. The rep- 

resentatives of modern theology, on the other hand, 
profess to reject all “authority religion;”’ they do not rec- 
ognize any authority, or norm, in religious matters, ex- 
cept the individual religious feeling or consciousness. 
The more advanced modernists deny even this as a re- 
ligious authority. Now to build a Christian theology on 
no other basis than religious feeling is manifestly im- 
possible. The representatives of modern theology re- 
ject the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures. In 
so far as they teach theology they do not have an ade- 
quate foundation for it. The fact is they, like the pope, 
substitute their own authority for that of Scripture. 
Wittingly or unwittingly they follow in the footsteps of 
the pope on this point. A few examples may serve to 
make this clear. 

Dr. Lyman Abbott has written a book on The Other 
Room, meaning heaven and the life in the beyond. A 
reviewer in a liberal theological journal raises the per- 
tinent question whether there is, from Abbott’s own 
point of view, a foundation for the picture of heaven 
which he gives. Abbott rejects the inspiration and au- 
thority of the Scriptures; he gives only his own thoughts 
on the points in question, partly in agreement with and 
partly contrary to Scripture. He believes in heaven but 
not in hell. He fails to give a single reason why he be- 
lieves as he does. Doubtless there are those who read 


T pope claims that he is a religious authority, a 





MODERNIST DENIAL OF INSPIRATION 101 


his books and accept his theology on no other authority 
than that of Dr. Lyman Abbott, 

Professor William Newton Clarke, one of the leading 
modern theology authors in America, wrote a book in 
which he records his departure from “the faith once de- 
livered.” He-points out that in his youth and early 
manhood he accepted the Scriptures as God’s inerrant 
word. Then he began to doubt the reliability of Scrip- 
ture. From decade to decade he permitted himself to 
drift farther and farther from his former position until 
finally the Bible was for him a book of many errors, no 
longer an authority in matters of faith. In his Christian 
Theology he asserts that there is no divine inspiration 
which makes the contents of the Bible authoritative or 
reliable. The authority of the Scriptures, he says, is 
found in its truth, not in its supposed inspiration. Since 
the Bible is believed to be authoritative only in so far 
as it is supposed to be true, nothing must be accepted 
on the authority of the Scriptures, or simply because it 
is written in the Bible. This is the new theology view 
of Scripture. Whatever may be said of it, it is obviously 
not the Christian view. In fact, it is the denial of the 
Christian doctrine of Scripture. It is the view held by 
unbelievers in general, including pagans. The meaning 
of the modern liberalistic view of Scripture is that the 
_ great truths of Scripture, which cannot be verified ex- 
cept on the ground that the Bible is the inspired Word 
of God, must be discarded. The propagation of this lib- 
eralistic view of Scripture sounds the death knell for 
these truths. The all-important questions of the whence, 
wherefore, and whither of human existence must remain 
unanswered. | 

Now while Professor Clarke, in consequence of his 
denial of the authority of Scripture, rejects some of the 
fundamental Christian doctrines, he inconsistently main- 
tains a few doctrines for which there is no other ground 


102 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


than Scripture authority. Dean Shailer Mathews says 
rightly that “generally speaking Clarke found the ma- 
terial of his theology in the Bible.” His various theo- 
logical views he attempted ‘to establish on a Scripture 
foundation. But why should he make such an attempt, 
if the Scriptures are not authoritative? Was it distaste- 
ful to him to proclaim his teachings on his own authori- 
ty? However that may be, the fact is that he substitut- 
ed his own authority for that of the Bible. This is ob- 
vious from his own statements. He says, for example, 
“I beg my fellow-Christians not to distrust the Bible 
or to fear for it, as if certain oper questions were to be © 
settled to its destruction or even to its weakening.” He 
says further that “the question of the religious value of 
the Bible is not an open question.’? Is it possible, it 
may be asked, that William Newton Clarke wrote these 
sentences? The Bible is in his opinion neither inspired 
nor inerrant, and among its errors are not only historic- 
al but also religious errors. Nevertheless he asks his 
readers to accept on his own authority the opinion that 
the religious value of the Bible— whatever that may 
mean—is not an open question. When he says, the 
Bible continues to be of great religious value he does 
not speak of the whole Bible. He does not mean to say 
that those religious thoughts of the Bible which he re- 
jects are of value. Clearly what he meant to say is that 
the value of certain religious ideas of the Bible is not 
open to question — namely of the religious ideas which 
appealed to Dr. Clarke as acceptable. In other words, 
under the guise of defending the religious value of the 
Bible, he defended the religious value of certain ideas 
which found favor before his eyes. In short, he clearly 
rejected the authority of Scripture and built his theol- 
ogy on his own authority. 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 446. 
2 Sixty Years with the Bible, p. 254. 





A FAILING AUTHORITY 103 


Pathetic indeed was the theological position of this 
liberalistic leader in his later years. Since the time of 
his early manhood he had been drifting, drifting. In his 
most prominent work he clearly intimates that he ex- 
pected to become still more liberal in his views. There 
is good evidence to show that he never ceased to drift 
and to tune his views to the changeable spirit of the age. 
Evidently he realized the thoroughly unstable character 
of what he retained as Christian theology; he recog- 
nized the danger that his readers and students, draw- 
ing the logical conclusion from his own premises, would 
be led to abandon the theological remnant which he la- 
bored to defend. He feared, apparently, that they would, 
on his own premises, come to the conclusion that there 
is no valid ground for Christian theology and for the 
existence of the church. Hence William Newton 
Clarke, who would not have his students accept any- 
thing on Scripture authority, asked them to accept his 
theology on his own authority. 

The late George Burman Foster, Professor in the 
University of Chicago, and in the latter part of his life 
also the pastor of a Unitarian church, was a well-known 
advocate of religious liberalism. He is noted, in fact, 
for his denial of all that is dear to the Christian’s heart. 
He openly denied the fundamentals of Christianity as 
well as the doctrinal points which the more moderate 
liberals, such as Professor Clarke, endeavored to retain. 
Nevertheless he professed to be an adherent of the 
Christian faith. He was, as already stated, the pastor 
of a liberalistic church and a leading representative of 
modernism. Since he represented the more advanced 
type of religious liberalism, the question is pertinent, 
Of what did the religious faith of Professor Foster con- 
sist and what were the grounds, or what was the author- 
ity on which it was established? 

In one of his last publications Professor Foster shows 


104 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


that some students in liberalistic seminaries have decided, 
against his advice, to abandon the ministry, and have 
“made shipwreck of faith.’ This means that they have > 
renounced the church and have joined the ranks of the 
avowed free-thinkers who are open opponents of the 
Christian church. Now, if the question can be solved 
wherein these students have changed when they left the 
ranks of Professor Foster’s followers to become pro- 
nounced unbelievers, it will then become clear what he 
means when he speaks of making shipwreck of faith; 
and consequently we shall be able to answer the ques- 
tion, what was his conception of “faith.” Therefore we 
desire to ascertain the differences between the position 
held by Foster and his followers on the one hand, and | 
that of avowed freethinkers on the other. | 

Wherein does Professor Foster’s position differ from 
that of the unbelievers? Perhaps he believed in God 
whom the freethinkers deny? No, he did not.differ from 
them on point of the existence of God. He says: “God 
is a symbol to designate the universe in its ideal achiev- 
ing capacity.” Religion, he says further, may adapt it- 
self to the idea that God and the universe are identical 
or, in other words, that there is no God but the uni- 
verse... He also agreed with the freethinkers in their 
opinion of Jesus. He denies His deity and even says: 
“Of Jesus we know honestly very little, almost nothing, 
with indubitable certainty.’ 

Or did Professor Foster differ from the freethinkers 
on point of the immortality of the soul? No, there is no 
difference in their views on this point. He did not teach 
immortality but held it as an open question, like the 
freethinkers. Since he was the pastor of a liberal church 
and as such was under obligation to lead in public wor- 


1 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 
p. 183. 
2 The same, p. 193. 





A THEOLOGICAL FREETHINKER 105 


ship, perhaps he differed from the freethinkers on the 
subject of prayer? Again a negative answer must be 
given. Professor Foster was of the opinion that we. 
should pray no other prayer than one which we our- 
selves may answer.* No freethinker would find fault 
with this conception of prayer. Or did he differ from 
them on point of the church? He occupied an ecclesi- 
astical office while the freethinkers hold that there is no 
need for the church. The difference here is apparent 
rather than real. Foster taught that Jesus never found- 
ed a church and its existence is quite inessential. There 
is, in short, no appreciable difference in doctrinal points. 
Professor Foster was a freethinker as far as doctrine 
is concerned. 

What about the subject of ethics? Perhaps Profess- 
or Foster defended some lofty moral ideals which the 
freethinkers do not accept. The published statement of 
principles of the freethinkers shows that this supposi- 
tion is unfounded. In fact, Professor Foster’s position 
on certain questions of moral reform was so exceedingly 
liberal and modern that he offended some of his own 
followers. 

When Professor Foster speaks of theological stu- 
dents as having made shipwreck of faith, he does not 
mean to find fault with them because they reject any or 
all of the points of Christian doctrine. He did not be- 
lieve that to deny the doctrines of Christianity is to 
make shipwreck of faith. The said students could in 
fact not be his followers without accepting the free- 
thinkers’ position on these points. Wherein, then, have 
they in his opinion erred that he speaks of them as hay- 
ing made shipwreck of faith? 

It is clear that Professor Foster would not have 
spoken of those students as having made shipwreck of 
faith if they had been willing to follow his footsteps and, 


3 The same, p. 184. 


106 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


though they were unbelievers, to accept the office of 
minister or teacher in the church. And it must not be 
supposed that the said students who have abandoned 
the ministry in consequence of taking a course in a lib- 
eralistic divinity school, have scruples against teaching 
their newly adopted religious views. The point to which 
they object is, to teach these views under the guise of 
Christianity. In other words, their sin, in Professor 
Foster’s eyes, consists in this that, after becoming free- 
thinkers — or, in plain English, unbelievers —they have 
concluded that they should not pretend to be Christian 
ministers. Obviously their conscience does not permit | 
them to accept an office which would put them under 
obligation to teach the Christian religion — only to teach » 
free thought to which Professor Foster and other teach- 
ers of similar views have converted them. We should 
say, therefore, their difficulty is one of conscience rather 
than of faith. To be plain, their training at the new the- 
ology institution has given them the modern theological 
views but, evidently, has not given them the modern- 
ized elastic conscience, at least not to the extent desired 
by the liberal teachers. 

Professor Foster, as said in a preceding paragraph, 
stood for the denial of Christian doctrine. He substi- 
tuted for the Christian faith the new dogma that free 
thought is only the most advanced modern interpreta- 
tion of or substitute for Christianity and, therefore, free- 
thinkers are Christians. However, if freethinkers are 
not willing to be considered Christians, if they will not 
be identified with the church, but join themselves to be 
avowed freethinkers, (as did the said theological stu- 
dents), they have in Professor Foster’s opinion, made 
shipwreck of faith. To make shipwreck of faith, then, 
is not to renounce the Christian faith, but it is to deny 
the Christian character of free thought. This means 
that, viewed from the liberalistic angle, to make ship- 





A MERE SHIBBOLETH 107 


wreck of faith is an exceedingly narrow, trifling thing. 
The religious difference between Professor Foster’s po- 
sition and that of the avowed freethinkers is a mere 
shibboleth. 

This brings us to the second part of our question, 
What is the ground or authority for the new dogma, 
making faith and shipwreck of faith so curious proposi- 
tions? It goes without saying that it is founded neither 
on Scripture, nor on science, nor on experience. Its on- 
ly foundation is the opinion of a freethinking professor 
who, by advancing this dogma, makes himself a relig- 
ious authority —a pope. Again we ask, what may be 
the reason that Professor Foster set up so outlandish a 
dogma which is unacceptable even to some of his own 
students whom he has largely influenced? What, in 
other words, is back of the peculiar type of popery for 
which he stood? Was it love to Christ that prompted 
him to demand of unbelievers to name themselves Chris- 
tians? But he held that we, practically, know nothing 
with certainty about the work and teaching of Christ. 
Or was it regard for the Christian church? In his larg- 
est theological work he claimed that Christianity is not 
the final and best religion. He called himself a Christian 
and also asserted, as we have seen, that, unless free- 
thinkers in general do likewise, they have made ship- 
wreck of faith. Nevertheless he admitted that, had he 
lived at some later period, he would not have pretended 
to be a Christian. According to a statement published 
by the Unitarian congregation of which he was pastor, 
he was “devoted to kindling the light of a better relig- 
ion.” It is worthy of notice that the Western Unitarian 
Conference, in 1886, refused to adopt the name “Chris- 
tian.” Dr, Foster, on the other hand, insisted that un- 
believers have a right to the Christian name. 

A curious thing is this modern liberalistic faith, as 
defended by Dr. Foster, is it not? For the Christian 


108 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


message it substitutes a mere shibboleth. It makes the 
question of being a Christian, or a religious person, 
hinge on an exceedingly narrow pivot— the unreason- 
able dogma of a little new theology pope. On point of 
narrowness it is almost unprecedented in religious his- 
tory. Lest the reader think there may be some mistake 
about it, it is repeated here that George Burman Foster 
was a distinguished professor in a leading university, 
one of the editors of a well-known theological maga- 
zine, a notable representative of the modern religious 
liberalism. Says a theological professor in the Univer- 
sity of Chicago, in a sketch of Foster’s life: “It is only 
through the work of such men as Professor Foster that 
the Church is enabled to keep step with the progress of © 
the ages. They do not sit in her councils, but they 
break out the paths of thought along which those coun- 
cils will later follow.’ 

The serious question arises, how is it to be accounted 
for that thinking people fai] to recognize the unreason- 
ableness, the narrow. popery of the modern faith for 
which this man stood and for which so many others 
stand, practically, today? How can such a position, as 
this man defended, be countenanced in a great universi- 
ty? Academic freedom, we are told, gives a professor 
liberty to teach his views. Does it? How long would 
a professor teaching Romish popery be tolerated in such 
an institution? And is not the modern liberalism, as 
represented by Dr. Foster, even more unreasonable and 
more narrow than Romish popery? What may be the 
reason, we must ask, that there are in our day so many 
who accept modern religious notions of any kind, be 
they ever so absurd? —that even highly educated peo- 
ple who disown the Christian faith seem to be helpless 
as children when brought face to face with a situation 
requiring religious discernment?—that they so easily 

4 The Christian Register, January 30, 1919, p. 10. 








WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE’S THEOLOGY 109 


fall prey to “strong delusions” and believe the modern 
faith to be an improvement on the Bible faith? — that 
professors in prominent theological seminaries are of the 
opinion that men like George Burman Foster alone can 
save the church and that she is doomed if she persists 
in Scriptural orthodoxy? How is it to be explained 
that such men take a position which any person of ordi- 
nary powers of intelligence should recognize as unrea- 
sonable? We have no answer to these questions except 
the one given by Paul, II Cor. 4:4. 


A comparison between George Burman Foster and 
William Newton Clarke shows that the difference in 
their theology was in degree, not in kind. Foster simply 
had advanced farther on the road on which Clarke also 
was traveling. Evidently the difference is, at least in 
part, due to the fact that Clarke lived nearly a genera- 
tion earlier than Foster and though he yielded to liberal- 
istic influences, he was at the time when the first wave 
of modern religious liberalism struck our land, a man of 
more advanced years finding it more difficult to adjust 
himself fully to the liberalistic viewpoint which he ac- 
cepted. Another reason for Foster’s greater radicalism 
is that he spent considerable time in the study of liberal- 
istic theology in Europe, 

William Newton Clarke, whose work on theology has 
been more widely read and studied in America than that 
of any other recent theological writer, is a representa- 
tive of liberalistic theology, though he was of the more 
moderate modern school. Not only does he reject the 
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, but he denies 
other fundamental Christian teachings. On point of 
the deity of Christ his teaching in his Outline of Chris- 
tian Theology is unsatisfactory, and in a later work he 
advanced views on this point which could be subscribed 


110 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


to by any Unitarian. Every reader of his books knows 
that he disowned other doctrines which, considered from 
the Scriptural point of view, are of vital importance. _ 

One of the most objectionable parts of Clarke’s: The- 
ology, is the section treating of the work of Christ, the 
Redemption and Atonement. The essential points are 
denied. The Bible teaches that sin is so “exceeding sin- 
ful” that the sacrifice of Calvary (God’s self-sacrifice) 
was necessary to make a way for sinful man to be saved. 
Christ, the just and innocent One, made atonement for 
the sin of the world by His vicarious death. He died for 
us. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. He 
bore our sin. Alone through His blood which He gave 
for a ransom there is salvation for fallen man. His per- 
fect righteousness is accounted to those who believe in 
Him. Clarke ignores and denies these vital truths. He 
stands for the “moral influence theory” of the Atone- 
ment. He sets aside the Scripture teaching of Christ 
satisfying the divine law in our stead; he denies the doc- 
trine of justification by faith. In short, Clarke denies 
the evangelical doctrine of the Atonement and of salva- 
tion by faith—the very heart of the Gospel message. 
He gives us a substitute which at first glance has 
the appearance of the genuine thing, but a close exam- 
‘ination shows it to be a counterfeit. Indeed the perti- 
nent chapters in his book may be said to be a master- 
piece of deception. 

The pertinent fact deserves notice that William New- 
ton Clarke accomplished far more for the cause of mod- 
ern religious liberalism than George Burman Foster. 
Where Foster has one reader, Clarke has a hundred. 
While Foster’s free thought position cannot possibly be 
mistaken, there are those who read Clarke and accept 
his views without recognizing their unscripturalness. 
Foster slew his thousands, and Clarke his ten thousands. 
In many theological seminaries Clarke’s Theology is used 





“AN EMASCULATED THEOLOGY” 111 


as a text book, it was placed in the Course of Study for 
Preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church (North). 
This. means that a candidate for the ministry in the 
Methodist Episcopal Church may be ordained only after 
he has studied this work as the theological text book. 
How strange that such a book is selected as the text 
book in theology. Is it possible, we must ask, that the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, as represented by the per- 
tinent committees, is of the opinion that this book is one 
of the best works on Christian theology? Professor 
John Alfred Faulkner, of Drew Theological Seminary, 
Says poignantly (without special reference to the use of 
Clarke’s Theology)’: 

Our young preachers thus get an emasculated theology that 
would make our Methodist fathers turn in their graves, though 
they will get it in so beautiful a spirit that they will almost without 
knowing it substitute modern subjectivism for those verities as old 
as Christ and Paul which made the Protestant churches and es- 
specially which made the Methodist Church. 

Clarke was a master of English style. A British re- 
viewer of one of his principal books rightfully intimates 
that as a rhetorician he was greater than as a theologian.! 
His extraordinary ability as a writer enabled him to give 
his defence of modernism a comparatively orthodox ap- 
pearance or, in other words, to sugar-coat the deadly 
poison which he disseminated. Despite his denial of the 
Christian fundamentals, he uses the familiar expressions, 
and the unwary suppose all to be right. The plea that 
his book is useful to make young ministers acquainted 
with modern views can, therefore, not be taken serious- 
ly. It goes without saying that theological text books 
should be thoroughly sound and should expose false 
doctrine instead of defending it or offering it in a sugar- 
coated form. The students should know that Clarke’s 


5 On the Value of Church History, p. 24. 
6 The Hibbert Journal, vol. VIII, p. 210. 


1 as MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


theology is founded on drifting sand and that its author 
prided himself of drifting with the times. They should 
be acquainted with the fact that only his death made an 
end to his theological drifting. Pity the minister who 
is left under the impression that such a book deserves to 
be regarded as an exposition of true Christian theology. 


XII 


THE ETHICAL INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION 
— THE LIBERALISTIC MORALITY 


tion of Christianity. Religion is either identified 

with morality and is held to be of value only in so 
far as it is defined as such; or morality is considered of 
primary importance and religion relegated to a second- 
ary place, the question of faith and creed being kept in 
the background. 

We shall here quote a number of liberalistic writers 
who testify to the fact that liberalism stands for an eth- 
ical interpretation of Christianity. Dr. K. C. Anderson, 
of Dundee, Scotland, says “According to Liberalism 
Christianity is an ethical system of teaching or precept, 
and Jesus Christ is the supreme teacher and moral and 
spiritual guide.”? Again this writer says: “The liberal 
criticism of the Scripture has, in effect, reduced Chris- 
tianity from the religion of redemption to an ethical sys- 
tem.’* “If the different forms of liberal theology be 
compared,” says the editor of one of the most important 
British theological journals, “it will be seen that, as or- 
thodoxy is left behind, there is a gradual increase in the 
spiritual competence assigned to man, and a gradual de- 
crease in the part assigned to the saving power of God, 
until we pass into what is almost pure moralism, in 
which the name of God is little more than the reminis- 
cence of past development.”? The modernized gospel, 


M tics oe liberalism offers an ethical interpreta- 


1 The Monist, 1915, p. 45. 
2 The same, p. 66. | 
3 The Hibbert Journal, October, 1915, p. 10 seq. 


114 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


says Walter Rauschenbusch, “plainly concentrates re- 
ligious interest on the great ethical problems of social 
life.”* This writer shows further that the social gospel 
“deals with the ethical problems of the present life.’ 
Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of 
Chicago, says: 


The ethical transformation of theology...... is actually taking 
place with great rapidity.6— The theology of our day is rapidly 
developing toward this larger ethical ideal.7 — Probably this ethical 
aspect of Christianity is most important in the eyes of most men. 
Theological opinions are very generally regarded as matters of 
personal option. But moral convictions are esteemed to be of 
primary importance.§ 


It is seen, then, that modern religious liberalism is 
closely related to the Societies for Ethical Culture. The 
purpose and aim of these societies is to advance the cause 
of good morals. In their program they exclude religion 
entirely; they set themselves the task “to increase 
mong men the knowledge of love and the’ practice of 
right.” ‘There is, in fact, no real difference between the 
message presented by the Ethical Culture Society lead- 
ers and that of the more radical liberalistic preachers 
who adhere to the ethical interpretation of Christianity. 
In the view of the Ethical Culture Societies, says Gus- 
tav Spiller, “no belief in a deity, no dogma, no authority 
is held superior to living the ethical life. The suprema- 
cy of ethics is the first doctrine taught.”® Again this 
writer says: “The spirit of the age [instead of God’s 
Word] rules in these societies.”*° One who attends the 
meetings of the ethical culture societies and of the more 


A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 15. 
The same, p. 16. 
s 


4 
6 
p. 226. 
The same, p. 245. 

8 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 561. 


9 Faith in Man. The Religion of the Twentieth Century, p. 187. 
10 The same, p. 188. 


5 
7 


ee ee ee | 





AN IMAGINARY DIFFERENCE 115 


radical liberalistic churches will be struck by the simi- 
larity of the messages of these institutions. True, the 
meetings of the Societies for Ethical Culture are not 
opened by prayer; it will be recalled, however, that the 
radical liberalistic preachers, though they offer prayer, 
do not believe that prayer will be answered in any real 
sense; they do not believe in a God who answers prayer. 
The Unitarian editor says, Unitarians differ from the 
Ethical Culture Societies on this point. He asserts that 
the Unitarians hold a theistic position, that is to say, 
they believe in God, while the Ethicists do not. Then 
the editor proceeds to give a definition of God which any 
representative of the Ethical Culture movement could 
subscribe to. He says Unitarians believe in God as the 
principle of life, the Presence who is eternally in, above 
and through the process of creation and who is indeed 
the process itself, growing from more to more, from im- 
perfection to perfection.t This definition shows that 
the dispute between the Unitarians and the said society 
is not worth while; it is, as a proverb has it, “a debate 
concerning the color of the emperor’s beard.” But while 
the liberal preachers, within and without the Unitarian 
connection, claim to be representatives of Christianity, 
the leaders of the Societies for Ethical Culture do not 
make any such claim. And, it should be added, these 
societies have practically no success in the attempt to 
win people for their cause; the number of their members 
is exceedingly small. On the other hand, the liberalistic 
preachers who defend the ethical interpretation of Chris- 
tianity, to all appearance owe their small success to the 
fact that they claim to be representatives of Christianity 
and their societies to be Christian churches. 

When we speak of the ethical interpretation of relig- 
ion, the thought is not that liberalism interprets religion 
as Christian morality. In fact, modernism defends lib- 


11 The Christian Register, March 13, 1924, p. 245. 


~ 


4 


116 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


eralistic ethical views which have resulted from a mod- 


ernized theology. The rejection of the inspiration of 


Scripture has destroyed not only the foundation of the 
faith, but of sound morality as well. The theories of 
evolution and of divine immanence do not offer an ade- 
quate substitute for the Scriptures as a basis for moral 
principle. 

The modern doctrine of God’s immanence inevitably 
revolutionizes the Christian moral conceptions. ‘“‘God 
is now recognized as immanent in all creation” says a 
writer in a prominent theological magazine, “things sec- 


ular have disappeared because all things, in their time 


2942 


and place and proper proportion, have become holy. 


While such is the opinion of this writer, there are, on 
the other hand, those who are aware that the very op- 


posite is the case. Modern liberalism, under the guise 
of making all things holy, has secularized all things. 
“The total secularization of all life seems to be the set 
program of the modern world,’!* says George Burman 
Foster. Professor G. A. Johnston Ross demands even 
that the church “must secularize God.” 

Modern thought, however, not only accepts the view 
that all things have become holy, but we are told that 
all acts of men are holy as well. “If God alone is and 
everything is God [or everything is the expression of an 
immanent God], vice is as divine as virtue, sin has no 
meaning and goodness no worth” says Alfred E. Gar- 
vie.* “If ail thoughts are thoughts of God, and all 
events are acts of God, then our evil desires and purpos- 
es are purposes and desires of God, and all our sinful 
deeds are deeds of God. — The logical consequence is a 
denial of the genuineness of the distinction between 
good and evil, right and wrong.’”** Dr. R. J. Campbell, 


12 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 513. 

13 The same, p. 188. 

14 The Christian Certainty Amid the Modern Perhicesan p. ll. 
15 The Reformed Church Review, 1917, p. 550. 





Par 


» 





= 


ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 


PANTHEISM WITHIN THE CHURCH 117 


the author of a number of theological books, said in a 
sermon: 

Sin itself is a quest for God—a blundering quest, but a quest 
for all that. The man who got dead drunk last night did so be- 
cause of the impulse within him to break thru the barriers of his 
limitations, to express himself, and to realize the more abundant 
life. His self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted, if only 
for a brief hour, to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter 
untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experiences. That 
drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in 
their sinful follies today, their trampling upon things that are 
beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for 
God, whom to know is life eternal. 

This is indeed a new doctrine. Not many years ago 
the editor of a well-known New York magazine which 
stands for religious liberalism, protested against the sub- 
stitut'ca of the modern view of divine immanence for 
omnipresence. In recent years belief in divine imma-_ 
nence has become quite common in liberalistic circles. 
A writer in The Reformed Church Review points out 
that open pantheism is current in the world today. 
“Within the Church we are a little more careful about 
our statements,” this writer says further; “yet here, too, 
there is a pantheistic trend. We are bidden to seek 
comfort in the fact that we are all divine and that God 
is present in the whole world.’'* 

It has been shown elsewhere that some of the fathers 
of liberalistic theology believed that there is no absolute 
truth, neither in theology nor in ethics. Now this is 
the view of the more advanced religious liberalism in 
general. Just as liberal theologians believe the Bible 
and Christian theology to be simply the result of man’s 
thinking, they accept a similar view concerning morality 
also. To deny the divine inspiration of Scripture means 
that there is no absolute standard or norm for morality. 
Representatives of modern liberalism admit unhesitat- 


16 The Reformed Church Review, 1918, p. 244. 


118 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ingly that from their point of view there is no absolute 
right or wrong. Dr. James H. Tufts, Head of the de-. 
partment of philosophy in the University of Chicago, 
says rightly: “The newer ethics is itself as yet uncertain 
of its categories. Jt does not know exactly what justice 
fi. e., right and wrong] is.”’7 Other liberalistic teachers 
of ethics agree with this view. “Ethical precepts thus 
are made relative to human needs instead of being re- 
ferred to any superhuman or pre-human source,” says 
Gerald Birney Smith.*® | 

This means, as the last named writer also points out, 
that moral principles and precepts are to be explained 
from the evolutionary point of view: that the moral law 
is man-made and that it may be abrogated and changed > 
by man. Therefore, from the liberalistic point of view, 
to keep the moral law is not so important a matter, and 
transgression is not necessarily so serious as has been 
supposed and as Scripture declares. The cries, “Back 
to nature,” “Trust your instincts” have followed in the 
wake of discarding divine authority. The poet Maeter- 
linck says: “We no longer allow the rights of any of our 
lower instincts to be contested. We know how to jus- 
tify and ennoble them by attaching them to some great 
law of nature.” Sin, in modern theology, has become 
misfortune. It has lost its “exceeding sinfulness.” 

The modern view of conscience deserves to be notic- 
ed here. Modernism regards conscience the product of 
evolution. Considered from the Biblical viewpoint con- 
science is a gift of God though to be a safe guide it needs 
to be enlightened by the Word and the Holy Spirit of 
God. The illuminated conscience has a real place in 
the Christian’s guidance. 

It is important to note that, for a long period after 
the rise of religious liberalism, the supremacy of Chris- 


17 The Biblical World, 1915, p. 13. 
18 Social Idealism and the hawatas Theater p. 89. 





GENERAL MORAL DECLINE 119 


tian ethics was not questioned. Those who denied 
Christ’s deity recognized Him, nevertheless, as the per- 
fect moral example, “the ideal man.” But within the 
last twenty-five years the fact has been brought home 
to liberalists that, unless Christ was really divine, there 
is no good reason to believe that He never erred mor- 
ally, or in other words, that He is the perfect moral ex- 
ample. If Christ was nothing more than a Jewish peas- 
ant, it would follow that neither His teaching nor His 
example is above criticism. In that case it would be 
inconsistent to regard His precepts as obligatory. for 
our age. In consequence modern liberalism, having dis- 
carded His deity, now openly denies His moral suprem- 
acy. The cry, “Back to nature,” has been boldly raised 
where formerly Jesus was held up as the supreme teacher 
of morality. Indeed, naturalism, to be consistent, must 
fall back on natural impulses for a moral guide. 


The result of the modern view of ethics is a general 
moral decline. The present evidences of moral deterior- 
ation are of such nature that they cannot be ignored. 
Many are the voices of protest, not only from orthodox 
Christian circles but from the ranks of religious liberal- 
ists as well. Professor Stuart P. Sherman has the fol- 
lowing to say on this point: 

Dante’s phrase “that she made lust and law alike in her decree, 
to take away the blame she had incurred,” sums up for me a deep, 
many-branched ruinous tendency of contemporary thought. This 
is the logical conclusion of the naturalistic philosophy which has 
been for many years subtly extending its influence in all countries 
and in every field of human activity. It is the logical conclusion of 
repudiating all standards, teaching one’s conscience to trot in the 
rut of events, and making one’s truth as one needs it.— The mod- 
ern man “blasphemes the divine power” by identifying its dictates 
with his appetites, so that no check of religious superstition or of 
reasoned reverence remains in his consciousness to oppose the 
indefinite expansion of his “self-love.’ — I am as certain as I 
can be of anything that God is a spirit who denies the validity 


120 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


of adopting the laws of the physical universe for the moral 
regimen of man.19 

Moncure D. Conway points out in his Hie ates: 
that modern science has discredited faith in the super- 
natural, but has failed to furnish a sufficient ethical — 
let alone religious — guide. He quotes his friend, Pro- 
fessor Goldwin Smith, as foreseeing “fatal results to the 
next generation unless science can construct something 
to take the place of the failing religious conscience.” 
This author also mentions the weil known fact that Her- 
bert Spencer, in his later years, deplored the regrettable 
moral results of modern science. Says Bertrand Rus- 
sell: 

Purposeless and void of meaning is the world which science — 
presents for our belief. That man is the product of causes which 
had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, 
his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but 
the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms [in other words, 
the result of blind force]; that nothing can preserve ‘an individual 
life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the de- 
votion, all the inspiration, all the noon-day brightness of modern 
genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar 
system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must 
inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins,— 
all these things, this author points out, are held, practically beyond 
dispute, by modern naturalistic science.?9 

“The poison of destructive Bible criticism,” says the 
Lutheran Observer, “has gone into the magazines, popu- 
lar novels, high schools, lecture platforms — among all 
classes of thinking people. Amd it is bearing fruit m 
moral decline.”* An, eminent English writer declared 
that “the prevalence of agnosticism and skepticism as to 
all ethical principles” has resulted in “a well-nigh uni- 
versal declension in morality which threatens to end in 


a total and permanent eclipse of the Sun of righteous- 


DB 


19 On Contemporary Literature, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 


9. 
20 Philosophical Essays, p. 60 f. 
21 Quoted The Bible Champion, March- reel 1917, p. 129. 





“CIVILIZATION FACES A CRISIS” 121 


ness.” Professor Guglielmo Ferrero, a well-known Ital- 
ian scholar, said in 1913: 


All the scruples and inner restraints with which, in the past, 
religion chastened the inner conscience of man, have fallen away 
and our civilization, so splendid and wealthy, is threatened with 
submersion beneath the mighty avalanche of three vices: fraud, 
immorality, and the arrogance of power...... I do not wish to ex- 
aggerate the transgressions of our modern Babylon, after the 
manner of Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen. Jt is never- 
theless certain that modern civilization faces a grave crisis in the 
matter of morals. 

Philadelphia’s best known Rabbi, Dr. Joseph Kraus- 
kopf, in his Atonement Day sermon, 1920, sounded a 
solemn warning of threatening disaster “unless both 
men and women take a stiff dose of the old-time religion 
to stiffen society’s moral backbone.— Many who are 
pleasure-mad and indulge in the social depravities of to- 
day know that their excesses and indecencies and im- 
moralities are iniquitous, but they have no longer the 
will-power to withstand them.” Dr. Howard A. Kelly, 
of Johns Hopkins University, distinguished as a scien- 
tist and surgeon, said in a lecture: 


Our country today is threatened with moral bankruptcy. I am 
not a pessimist or an optimist, but a steady searcher for truth as 
it exists. There are many indications of this moral degeneracy. 
Class feeling between rich and poor, the minimizing value of hu- 
man life, the pleasure-mad habits of our people and the ever in- 
creasing amount of dishonesty in the body politic. With all these © 
weaknesses of a nation there is bound to be the inevitable one of 
immorality of the sexes and its consequent train of diseases. 

Years ago I used to hear men speak in lowered tones of the 
gay life of Paris. Today all our big cities, even our smaller ones, 
offer as great opportunities for vice. Thank God, these terrible 
diseases are not quite so universal in America as on the continent 
of Europe, but they are bad enough. 


Sylvanus Stall says, at no previous time in the his- 
tory of this country has such a stress been put upon the 
virtue of our young men and women as today. The 


122 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


split skirt and X-ray garments of the women make our 


city streets and village thoroughfares a menace to every | 


man who would keep his mind from evil suggestions. 
Doctor Yamei Kim, of the Pei-yang Woman’s Medical 
School in China, on a recent visit to this country, re- 
marked concerning the dress of women: “In big social 
gatherings in America and Europe I see many ladies 
wearing ‘fast’ dress. ‘These ladies are vainly trying to 
show off their physical beauty, or suggest that they 
have it. It would be impossible for an Eastern woman 
of fine taste to wear the dress I often see in America and 
Europe.” Dr. Winfield Scott Hall, a well-known Chi- 
cago physician, says of the dress of the modern woman: 
“Girls in their daily work, as well as women on the ball- 
room floor, have squelched their consciences and mod- 
esty to adopt the sensuous dress, with the result that 
immorality exists where otherwise there would have 
been decency and cleanliness.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox 
wrote (in 1915): 


Woman’s idea of modesty seems to be very much of a theory 
and is not illustrated by her conduct, or her dress. The exhibi- 
tions of immodesty of dress which one sees in every drawing- 
room, in every ball-room, on the street, at lectures, and in homes, 
are appalling to most men. The American husband, who is the 
most liberal-minded being on earth, sometimes makes feeble ob- 
jections, but usually ends by accepting the statement of wife and 
daughters that they must follow the fashions if they would not 
be considered quite out of the world. 


The hero of the average comedy is a gay dog who spends his 
life in deceiving his elderly and trusting wife, and telling her im- 
probable stories which she swallows without even the proverbial 
grain of salt. 


He tells her that he is summoned to Mexico on business, © 


when he really goes off on a spree; he represents the chorus girl 
with whom she catches him dining as his long lost and wealthy 
aunt; he conceals his feminine visitor in the office safe when his 
spouse comes down unexpectedly to his place of business, and 
we shriek with joy and amusement over his cleverness. 
Apparently, not a thought of the immorality of the thing, and 





THE MODERN BALLROOM 123 


of the disgusting duplicity of a man who lies to his wife, enters 
the mind of the audience. 

Perhaps the real answer to the problem of why divorce is on 
the increase may be found in the fact that we have made marital 
infidelity a subject for mirth. We condone it when we laugh at it. 

There are the obscene-minded who only laugh at disgusting 
vulgarity. They find no story funny that has not a double entendre 
meaning. They go to see broad plays where the wit is coarse 
and every suggestion ribald. Outwardly these people may seem 
to lead decent lives, but sooner or later you will find that they 
have been indulging in the sensuality they found so deliciously 
amusing to hear about. 


Rabbi Wise of New York said (in 1914): “Nearly all 
men and women were shocked when the wretched mod- 
ern dances were perpetuated for the first time. If one 
were to enter a New York ballroom today for the first 
time after ten years’ absence he would be struck dumb 
with disgust and astonishment at the degeneration 
which has come to pass within a little time.” The same 
writer speaks in this connection of “the widespread 
moral deterioration which we see about us, the general 
lowering of standards, the evidences of which are many 
and multiplying.’’? Dr. John Haynes Holmes writes: 

Dancing today, even among our so-called “best people,” is 
indecent. In watching a dancing party at a seacoast resort this 
past summer, we noticed all kinds of dances and postures which, 
in the settlement and community center dances in the New York 
slum districts, the chaperons are under strict orders to forbid as 
immoral. Nowhere in our social life today is there such evidence 
of degeneracy as on the dance floor. The music is barbaric, the 
dressing immodest, and the dances brutally sexual.23 

Referring to the refusal of the Methodist Church to 
admit actors and actresses into membership, the same 
writer says in Unity: 

On the other hand, however, we wonder if the actors and 


actresses of our time are wholly without blame. Are they not 
earning their living in the service of an institution which is rapidly 





22 The Literary Digest, January 31, 1914, p. 210. 
23 Unity, September 23, 1920, p. 21. 


124 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


sinking to the lowest depths of moral degradation? Are not men 
and women, supposedly respectable, appearing nightly in plays 
which outrage every decent instinct of human’ nature? Are not © 
the members of the profession, in other words, aiding and abet- 
ting the debauchery of the commercial managers, by consenting 
to do for them their dirty work? One cannot touch pitch without 
being defiled. One cannot act in a disreputable play without 
one’s self coming under suspicion of being a disreputable char- 
acter. 


And again this writer says: 
The New York theatrical season [1920], which sets the pace 
for all the rest of the country, seems just a little worse this year 


than it has ever been before. Crude vulgarity competes with in- 


decency presented in the guise of gorgeous spectacle, and both 
threaten to be engulfed by the mounting flood of inane futility. 
The Broadway stage is crowded with women who are actresses 
only in the sense that they are willing to expose their nakedness 
to the public gaze, and with men whose only qualifications are 
the ability to tell a dirty joke in a dirty way. 


A well-known secular magazine has the following in 
an editorial on the present-day theater: 


To all but playgoers of the very newest generation there must 
occasionally come the thought that there has taken place a vast 
change in our toleration of things on the stage. The theatre 
does not hesitate nowadays to put into vivid representation topics 
and occurrences which the reviewer may well hesitate to mention 
by name in even the cold abstractness of type. Marital infidelity 
has always been a legitimate dramatic motive, but formerly it 
was suggested, not shown. Today it is given to us in full detail, 
and our authors and producers have come to look upon seduction 
and rape as perfectly legitimate material for frank depiction be- 
fore miscellaneous audiences. 


The ethical interpretation of religion, or the identifi- 
cation of religion with morality, is clearly the denial of 
the Christian teaching that true morality needs religion 
for a foundation. Liberalism, declaring that there is no 
religion but morality, makes morality its own founda- 





“TREACHEROUSNESS OF HUMAN INSTINCTS” 125 


tion. Religion is disowned and a new morality substi- 
tuted for the Christian morality. Modern moral teach- 
ing, with which religious liberalism is identified, finds 
itself in evident bewilderment. Religion, as defined by 
modernism, is nothing more than a name. It has been 
well said that men in our day cheerfully give up the 
substance but never the name of Christianity. ‘“Relig- 
ion in these days is the more praised as it is the more 
attentuated and dissolved,” said William Hayes Ward, 
formerly editor of The Independent.** Another theolog- 
ical writer, Professor John A. W. Haas, says: “If, then, 
finally the authority of the message is gone, we are left 
without any authority, religion is adrift and optimism is 
a pure speculation. We are hastening through our mod- 
ern liberalism into conditions of religious dissolution 
which no sentimentalist can deny.””? Professor Walter 
Scott Athearn, of Boston University, speaks of “the 
present tide of indifference, luxury, and commercial 
greed,” and remarks: “We are fast drifting into a cul- 
tured paganism.—In fifty years crime has increased 
four hundred per cent. Something must be done to 
underpin the virtues of our people.””® 

To conclude the subject of the New Morality we 
quote a noteworthy paragraph by Professor Stuart P. 
Sherman: 

The great revolutionary task of the nineteenth-century think- 


ers, to speak it briefly, was [considered to be] to put man into 
nature. The great task of the twentieth-century thinkers is to get 


him out again — somehow to break the spell of these magically 
seductive cries, “Follow Nature,” “Trust your instincts,’ “Back 


to Nature.” We have trusted our instincts long enough to 
sound the depths of their treacherousness. We have followed 
nature to the last ditch and ditch water. In these days, when the 
educator, returning from observation of the dog kennel with the 


24 The American Journal of Theology, 1909, p. 229. 
25 The Lutheran Church Review, 1917, p. 188. 
26 Religious Education and American Democracy, p. 11. 














126 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


treatise on animal behaviour, thinks he has a real clue to the edu- 
cation of children; when the criminologist with a handful of 
cranial measurements imagines that he has solved the problem > “a 
of evil, when the clergyman discovers the ethics of the spirit by a7 
meditating on the phagocytes in the blood; when the novelist, ¥ 
returning from the zoological gardens, wishes to revise the re- 
lations of the sexes so as to satisfy the average man’s natural 
craving for three wives; when the statesman after due reflection 
on “the survival of the fittest” feels justified in devouring his 
neighbors — in the presence of these appeals to nature, we may 
wisely welcome any indication of a counter revolution.27 


27 On Contemporary Literature, p. 10. In connection with the 
subject under consideration the book, The Menace of Immorality 
in Church and State, by Dr. John Roach Straton, deserves mention. 


XIII 


THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 


man’s sinfulness and the Biblical conception of 

the world. The “exceeding sinfulness of sin,” the 
existence of Satan and his kingdom, and the need of 
supernatural salvation are denied. For the Bible mes- 
sage of personal reconstruction the social gospel substi- 
tutes the call to socia] reconstruction. 

Not long ago the General Secretary of Home Mis- 
sions of one of the more prominent evangelical denomi- 
nations in a public address set forth the nature and 
meaning of the social gospel, He himself being an ardent 
advocate of it. His address in substance follows. 


M mes theology rejects the Bible teaching on 


The thought that there is a kingdom of evil besides the king- 
dom of God is all wrong. There is only one kingdom and every 
man is a citizen of it. Since there is only one immanent life 
force, the world is a unit and man also is a unit. There is no 
room therefore for the old conception of sin. Furthermore there 
should be no attempt made to draw a line of distinction between 
things religious and secular, holy and unholy, Christian and-non- 
Christian, the church and the world. Sin is, in the last analysis, 
not a personal but a social evil. It is the result of improper social 
conditions. So long as our social order is not Christianized, sin 
will ever be present with us. It is impossible to lead a Christian 
life except in a Christianized society. Yet if we accept the 
thought of divine immanence, sin and evil cannot be quite so bad 
as they seem to be. Considered from the viewpoint of the social 
gospel the thought that God would damn a man because of sin 
is offensive. 

Since man is inherently good and all men are God’s children, 
there is in modern religion no place for individual salvation. The 
divine plan of salvation of which conservatives still speak is su- 
perstition. What is needed is not individual but social salvation. 
For although the world is God’s kingdom, it does not follow that 


128 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


all is developed to perfection, or is incapable of further improve- 
ment. Such a conception would not fit into the scheme of general 


evolution. Salvation has become a social term. It means that 


the world must be made better socially by reforms and social im- 
provements of various kinds, by education and moral advance- 
ment. 


In a word, the social gospel addresses itself to the task to 
make the world a decent place to live in. This is the business of 
the church in the new age. Considered in its true light this en- 
deavor is essentially religious, it is the manifestation of true 
spirituality. What was formerly spoken of as religious is of value 
only in so far as it serves social ends. If my life is a unit, then 
all that pertains to my life is an object of the church’s mission. 


Such is the modern social gospel. ~The Biblical Gos- 


pel of salvation is “restated”; the Cross is given “a so- 


cial interpretation.” For true spiritual religion we are 


offered a substitute having no other purpose than to 
make the world a decent place to live in. The new gos- 
pel is the gospel of externalism. It is assumed that fa- 
vorable external conditions will bring about the moral 
regeneration of society and that human nature will re- 
spond automatically to its better environment. Salva- 
tion is to come through civic, economic, social and po- 
litical remedies. Certain defenders of the social gospel 
tell us that until a man’s economic and social desires 
have been satisfied, it is both useless and illogical to 
preach to him morality and spirituality. To Christian- 
ize the social order, rather than the individual, or in 
other words, to make the world a decent place to live 
in, is supposed to be the great task of the church. 


The social gospel therefore lays enormous emphasis 
on a man’s physical and material well-being. Religion 
is held to be nothing more than a plan for social wel- 
fare. Christianity, being considered a scheme of social 
improvement, is reduced to humanitarian and social en- 


deavors. It is interpreted in terms of materialistic hu-- 


manitarianism. Education and sanitation take the place 





’ = 


“HUMANIZING RELIGIOUS INTERESTS” 129 


of personal regeneration and the Holy Spirit. True 
spiritual Christianity is denied. 

The social gospel is in fact religiously indifferent. It 
holds that the difference between Christianity and other 
religions is in degree, not in kind. Yet the social gospel 
comes under the cloak of religion. We are told that the 
spirit of loyalty and devotion shown towards modern 
social endeavors deserves the name of religion and Chris- 
tianity. “The man who enters thoroughly into the so- 
cial movements of his time,” says Professor Edward 
Scribner Ames, of the University of Chicago, “is to that 
extent genuinely religious, though he may characterize 
himself quite otherwise [1. e., though he may be an 
avowed unbeliever|]. Non-religious persons are accord- 
ingly those who fail to enter vitally into a world of social 
activities and feelings.” John Herman Randall says: 
“The simple fact is, we are living in an age that is fast 
becoming socialized from top to bottom, and individual 
religion, like individual ethics, must give way to broad- 
er and more social conceptions.” “The rapid and sig- 
nificant development of Christianity in the interests of 
what is called the ‘social gospel,” says Professor Gerald 
Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, “is really 
part and parcel of a humanizing of religious interest.”® 

The social gospel is proclaimed in numerous books 
and magazine articles as well as from many pulpits. 
Countless representatives of modern liberalism are de- 
fending it. “Our old religion was a process of saving a 
few souls here and there out of a world that we con- 
demned as bad,” says a prominent Methodist preacher 
of the State of New York; “the new religion is a com- 
munity affair, and we will make our towns and our 
cities the right kind of places so that everybody will be 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1908, p. 543. 
2 Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 291. 
3 The Biblical World, May, 1919, p. 254. 


130 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM — 


a Christian as a matter of course. When it used to be 
hard to be good, it will become difficult to be bad.” In- 
dividual salvation is practically spurnéd and denied. A 
minister of a Unitarian church in New York said re- 
cently in a sermon: “No man is satisfactorily saved un- 
less he is a member of a saved home; there cannot be a 
saved home unless there is a saved community, nor can 
there be a saved community until there is a saved 
world.’”* In other words, salvation is wholly a matter 
of social improvement. 

Considering the question from the Ree of Next 


Testament Christianity some fatal weaknesses of the. 


social gospel are in evidence. The new gospel identifies 


essence and fruit. Making social service the most 1m-. 


portant feature of Christianity, the fruit is mistaken for 
the essence. In fact, the fruit is divorced from the tree 
that produces it. Social betterment is excellent as the 
outgrowth of Christianity; the attempts to make it a 
substitute for the Christian religion have signally failed. 
The social gospel overlooks the fact that man’s greatest 
needs are of a spiritual nature, and hence the greatest 
service to man is to supply these needs. The new gospel 
ignores the vital and fundamental issues that have to do 
with man’s spiritual well-being and true betterment. 
The primary duty of the church, namely, to give spirit- 
ual food to the souls of men, is set aside. It is a whole- 
sale effort for the improvement of mankind on the sur- 
face rather than for betterment in the mainspring of 
the heart where the seat of evil lies. 

Christianity recognizes the fact that personal recon- 
struction through the Gospel is the greatest factor in 
bringing about real and lasting social betterment in the 
world. John Morley, a noted British author, gives the 
following significant testimony: 


We all have been upon the wrong track, and the result is” 


4 Quoted in Our Hope, July, 1919. 


—? - = * 







= 


ed ne a ee Te eee oe 
nut a) CPE aise je te ar oe ee ae 


CHRISTIAN MOTIVE IN SERVICE 131 


that the whole of us have less to show for our work than’ one 
man, Booth [of the Salvation Army]. Herbert Spencer, Matthew 
Arnold, Frederic Harrison, and the rest of us who have spent our 
lives in endeavoring to dispel superstition and to bring on a new 
era, have to admit that Booth has had more direct effect upon this 
generation than all of us put together.’’5 

The social gospel, then, fails to distinguish between 
Christian service and social service. But the two are 
not identical. The successful business man, or laborer, 
is rendering valuable social service though he may not 
be a Christian, or he may be a Christian only nominally 
and hence may be lacking the Christian motive that is 
essential to Christian service. It is quite true that the 
meanest manual labor is sanctified and becomes elevat- 
ing when it is done from a Christian motive, “as unto 
the Le:d.” But this does not mean that such work ig in 
itself of equal importance with the more direct Christian 
work which has to do principally with leading men to 
Christ and caring for their spiritual welfare. The Apos- 
tle Paul making tents in Ephesus did an important work. 
It enabled him to continue his labors to which the Lord 
had called him. But great would be the world’s loss 
had Paul been of the opinion that secular work in itself 
is as important as the preaching of the Gospel, and had 
given his whole time and effort to tent making and oth- 
er kinds of social service. Had Paul even devoted the 
entire income from his business to Christian purposes, 
he would have made a mistake. It was not the work to 
which God had called him. Yet there are plenty of men 
who are called of God to make tents. If they do their 
work from the same motive as Paul did his work and 
are as faithful as Paul was, their reward in the day of 
Christ will be equal to that of Paul. Christian work 
done from the Christian motive must be distinguished 
from social service in which this motive is absent. 


5 The Harvard Theologica’ Review, July, 1916, p. 318. 


132 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Another glaring weakness of the social gospel is that 
it does not address itself to all classes, If social service 
is the whole of Christianity, then those who are unable 
to render such service are deprived of the privilege of 
being Christians. The social gospel has no message for 
the halt and maimed, the suffering from cancer and tu- 
berculosis; no message for the dying. To those whose 
souls cry out for the living God the message of the new 
gospel is a mockery. 

Professor Thomas N. Carver, a hes religious lib- 
eral; calls attention to another flaw in the gospel of so- 
cial service, namely its indefiniteness. He points out 
that “under the old doctrine of salvation Christian work 
had a definite meaning. It meant saving souls....bring- 
ing them into the kingdom.” He says further: 

It is not enough to preach the gospel of work unless you men- 
tion the job at which you expect people to work. Instead of mere- 
ly saying, “Work, for the night is coming,” it is necessary to be 
‘somewhat specific and say (if the metre can be fixed up), “Improve 
this road, for the night is coming. Build this bridge, for the night 
is coming. Drain this swamp. Improve this crop, for the night is 
coming. 

In the absence of some kind of doctrine of sa!vation work 
means little more than persuading people to join the Church. 
Under these conditions, the Church becomes very much like an 
initiation society, such as you would find in many colleges.® 

The pastor of a Unitarian church — formerly a Pres- 
byterian minister — writes: 

Not very long ago the livest and most vigorous denominations 
had two objects, which really amounted to one, that were perfectly 
clear in their own consciousness and to the world, — the conversion 
to goodness of those who were not good, and the building up in 
goodness of those who had been converted. All their efforts were 
directed to the accomplishment of these definite ends. Their con- 
ception of what constitutes goodness and of the way to put one’s 
self in possession of it was doubtless crude and in large measure 
mistaken. They had involved goodness in a network of abstruse 
theology. But nevertheless, sticking close to the Bible, as they 


8 The Harvard Theological Review, July, 1915, p. 384. 





SAVING THE FARMER’S CROPS W333 


understood it, they drew the people, held their grip on them, and 
promoted real goodness in their lives. Fundamentally these fore- 
fathers were right. And they held the people because both they 
and the people knew that they were right. We who have discarded 
conversion and growth in grace as outlandish absurdities, and the 
Bible too, or at least have reduced them to the flabbiest kind of 
thing, who have left ourselves without any clear object, who are 
driven hither and thither by every wind of doctrine and sleight of 
men, are in niortal error, and the world knows it.7 

A reason why the social! gospel is lacking in definite- 
ness is that the task which it would lay upon the church 
is too extended in scope. Social service is a very broad 
term. A number of writers, as for example Professor 
Edward L. Earp, of Drew Theological Seminary, are of 
the opinion that the church should identify herself with 
the Rural Life Movement. To make the country church 
a success, we are told, the church must make it her 
business to build up a prosperous farming community. 
The rural preacher must be an agricultural expert. He 
must concern himself with the problems of better seeds, 
better breeds, better implements, and up-to-date meth- 
ods of farming. As a prominent religious periodical 
summed it up some years ago, a minister should be 
trained to “save the crops of his people, as well as their 
souls.” ‘There have been arranged agricultural summer 
courses for ministers. “It is the plan to teach the rural 
pastors how they may help the farmers to get better 
crops by applying scientific methods,” we read in a 
prospectus for such a course, “so that the farmers in 
return may learn better church-methods.” 

If it is the church’s business, however, to teach agri- 
culture to rural populations, can she consistently over- 
look the fact that the cities are teeming with those whose 
usefulness could be greatly enhanced by further training 
in the occupations which they are following, and who 
also should be won for the church? — For the church to 


7 The Christian Register, August 26, 1920, p. 12. Italics mine. 


134 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


accept the modern program of social service would be 
not merely to neglect the work to which she is called, 
but it would mean that she become a “Jack of all trades 
and master of none” —a real obstacle to general effi- 
ciency. American agriculture must be in a bad way if 
the farmers need the ministers to teach them how to 
raise pigs and grow corn. 

Rejecting, in short, the Christian view of man’s sin- 
fulness and of an evil world, the social gospel prescribes 
reformation as the reeded remedy. Reformation and 
man-wrought changes are believed adequate to make the 


individual as well as the world all that is to be desired. | 


Now it cannot be questioned for a moment that reform 


is good in its place. Ifa thief ceases to steal and begins. 


to work for an honest living, he is doing a praiseworthy 
thing. Christianity does not hold the absurd view that 
the vicious and profligate are as desirable members of 
society as they who live honorable lives. But it is the 
church’s business to stand for Christianization in the 
New Testament sense, not for mere reformation. A 
sinner who reforms is not for that reason a Christian. 
Reformation will not change the human heart. Regen- 
eration is the work of God. 


Walter Rauschenbusch has written A Theology for 
the Social Gospel. ‘The title of this book is significant. 
The substance of its contents is not claimed to be the 
theology but a theology for the social gospel. This au- 
thor’s primary interest was the gospel of Socialism. 
Theology was to him, as it is to modernists in general, 
quite a secondary matter. In his view its value is to 
be measured by the possible service it could be made to 
render the social gospel. This new liberalistic theology 
is supposed to be a thing to be used rather than accept- 


ed as true. Rauschenbusch’s theology is by no means. 


the foundation for his gospel, but is itself founded on 


st 
- 
me. 
mn 
re, 
a 





THE JESUS OF THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 135 


the social gospel. He admits that some other theology 
may be built on the principles of Socialism and he knew 
that the great majority of Socialists do not accept his 
theology. In fact nearly all the leading Socialists, fol- 
lowing in the footsteps of Karl Marx, their greatest 
representative, look upon all theology with contempt. 
Rauschenbusch never made the claim that Socialism 
would not be successful without accepting his theolo- 
gy, but he hoped that his theology would aid the 
cause of Socialism by making it acceptable to professing 
Christians. In one instance he makes this honest con- 
fession: “Of course some of the ideas I have ventured 
to put down are simply a play of personal fancy about 
a fascinating subject.”* All this means that “the theol- 
ogy for the social gospel” is not a matter of vital con- 
cern to the cause of Socialism nor to any other cause. 

“The social gospel is believed by trinitarians and 
unitarians alike,” says Rauschenbusch, “by Catholic 
Modernists and Kansas Presbyterians of the most ce- 
rulean colour. It arouses a fresh and warm loyalty to 
Christ wherever it goes, though not always a loyalty to 
the Church.’® But since the social gospel, as represent- 
ed by this author, rejects the deity of Christ, it is incor- 
rect to say that it is accepted by trinitarians. Again, 
deny Christ’s deity, and the Jesus you have left is not 
a person deserving loyalty. Could you honor as a leader 
a mere man who said in regard to his own person what 
Jesus said about Himself: “I am the light of the world 
—the way, the truth and the life—the living bread 
come down from heaven; before Abraham was I am; 
all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth,” 
etc.? Would not one saying these things about himself, 
unless they are true, deserve sympathy and pity, rather 
than honor? 


: A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 238. 
9 The same, p. 148. 


136 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the Outlook, recently said that 
church attendance is not an index to religious interest, 
because men read religious articles in magazines and ex- 
press their worship in social service. Indeed modern 
church-goers are often told that such service is the lead- 
ing interest of Christianity. It is generally known that 
in the modernized churches the emphasis is laid on so- 
cial service, reform, and morality. Addresses on sub- 
jects of this nature are largely taking the place of the 
sermon. May not this be one of the principal causes of 
the decline of church attendance? A layman writing 


in a theological magazine complains that the attempt of © 


the church to “Christianize the social and civil life of the 
world,” 
larization of the church by the world. He deplores the 
fact that this cry of warning should come from a lay- 
man, and that of the clergymen (who, as a rule, were 
trained in liberalistic theology) “not one in ten” will a- 
gree with his view. He says further: 


The sacred edifice heretofore dedicated to the worship of Al- 
mighty God has now become the center of secular functions. We 
now go to church to hear sermons on the minimum wage, ade- 
quate housing of the poor, the regulation of moving pictures and 
the dance-halls, how to vote, and the latest vice-investigation re- 
port. Billiard and pool tables are being installed, dancing classes 
are organized, and all sorts of amusements offered to entice the 
youth within its sacred precincts. A child returning home from 
Sunday school recently was asked by its mother the subject of 
the lesson. It was how to keep the streets clean. Another Sun- 
day, kindness to dumb animals furnished the subject of the les- 
son, and this was a graded Sunday school, up to date. A good 
woman who had suffered greatly with a recent sorrow brought 
herself to church longing for some comforting word. She heard 
a sermon on the Charity Organization Society and the Visiting 
Nurse. 


Ministers of the Gospel are willing to preach on every sub- 


ject under the sun except the Gospel, and when they begrudgingly 
mention the Gospel, they almost tell us it is not divine, but a man- 
made thing. They have relegated to the brush-heap most of the 


through social service, has resulted in the secu- 


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TESTIMONY OF A UNITARIAN MINISTER = 137 


sacred doctrines and many of them even deny the validity of their 
own divine office as ministers of God. All comes from man, 
nothing from God. Perhaps this is the reason so many ministers 
look down on empty pews and complain bitterly that their mem- 
bers do not come to hear the sermons prepared with so much 
labor.10 


Social service as a substitute for the old Gospel mes- 
sage has been tried out by Unitarians and other liberal 
churches. There is abundant proof to show that it has 
utterly failed, a fact that is persistently ignored by its 
present advocates. The churches which have embraced 
the social gospel, says a writer in the Harvard Theolog- 
ical Review, “have distinctly weakened their life and 
influence.”*?— A writer in the Biblical World says: 


The secularization of the activities of the church has weak- 
ened its spiritual life and emptied its pews of devout worshipers. 
—Today altruism has largely superseded churchly Christianity, 
and social service in a very material manner has made many 
churches in our land a social club or an executive committee for 
the engineering of social activities.12 


A prominent Unitarian minister writes: 


During my sixty years of service in the Unitarian ranks J have 
Seen scores of organizations go down to defeat because they did 
not make religion the one all-important element in their work and 
in their appeal to the public. Let me cite instances of this kind. 
A minister and his wife took charge of a Unitarian church that 
was fairly prosperous and immediately threw themselves with 
ardor into every available kind of social service. Among other 
good things they organized an unsectarian literary club which at- 
tracted some of the best people in the city. Some years after, the 
minister's wife was eagerly telling me of the wonderful success 
of the club, when I asked, “How about the church?” “Oh, that 
is closed,” was the answer. 

In another church there was a popular preacher who always 
drew a large congregation of people who were interested in the 
various radical reforms that he advocated, but his audience was a 
procession and not a compact congregation. As soon as the peo- 


10 The Reformed Church Review, April, 1916. - 
11 The Harvard Theological Review, July, 1916, p. 314. 
12 November, 1914, p. 312. 


138 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ple whom he attracted became familiar with his idiosyncrasies 
they ceased to attend his church. He once said to me, “I have 
seen enough people go through my church to build a city.” I re- - 
peated his remark to a brother minister who said, “And -they 
never go to church again.” 

A well-known literary man said to me, “Some of us thought 
we could do without the church, so we met on Sunday morning 
and discussed literature and seciology; but after a time we 
learned that the church had something to give that we did not 
get, and so we adjourned our meetings and went to church.”13 


Social reform, as differentiated from the social gos- 
pel, ought to be a principal concern of every government. 
It is in no sense a substitute for individual regeneration 
and for the Christian religion. Despite the most desir- 
able reforms people may be materialistic and godless. 
Col, Raymond Robins, of Chicago, gives the following 
report from a land which is well-known for its political 
reforms: | 


In Australia, foremost in legislation for women and children, 
where the eight-hour day is the universal day, where municipal 
ownership of railroads, trams and telephones prevails, where that 
whole social program has been worked out, a labor party is in 
full command of the three industrial states. “Surely,” you say, 
“everything will be happy and beautiful there.” Well, in the 
streets of Sydney I saw more drunken men and women than I 
ever saw in Chicago, and the whole community was getting the 
uneconomic mind, the something-for-nothing attitude. Why, you 
could see whole groups stand in line on Saturday afternoon wait- 
ing to bet a portion of their week’s wages in government protect- 
ed lotteries. A greater illegitimate birth rate prevails there than 
in any other nation of which we have record, and a lower general 
birth rate in the cities than of any nation of which we have rec- 
ord. Why? Material prosperity. Seven million people fringed 
around an area as large as the United States. 


Maxim Gorky, the noted Russian author, writes: 


“What alarms me most is the fact that the social revolution 
does not bring with it any sign of spiritual regeneration among 
men. It does not seem to be making men more honest. It is not 
lifting their self-esteem nor the moral value of their labor. At 


13 The Christian Register, November 14, 1918, p. 6. 





A MESSAGE OF DESPAIR 139 


least one does not notice among the masses that the revolution 
has lifted or quickened their social conscience. Human life is 
appraised just as cheaply as it was before. The habits of the 
old regime are not disappearing. The new authorities are just as 
brutal as the old ones were and, in the bargain, their manners are 
worse. The new officials permit themselves to be bribed just as 
easily and they send men to prison in herds as the old did. Phys- 
ical force has merely been transferred. But this does not in any 
way help the growth of new spiritual forces among us. The 
rectification of wrong can come only through the development of 
our spiritual forces.” 

Various representatives of the social gospel, among 
them Walter Rauschenbusch, have said, it is impossible 
to be a Christian so long as our social order has not been 
reconstructed along socialistic lines. No one can live a 
Christian life, we are told, in an unsocialized common- 
weaith. So, as concerns personal salvation, the social 
gospel, according to its own representatives, means that 
we cannot hope to be Christians at the present time. 
Considered from a Christian viewpoint it must be saia, 
therefore, that the social gospel brings a message of de- 


spair. 


XIV 


RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY, THE DENIAL OF 
GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY 


trast to autocracy, or the rule of a king or prince. 
But what is religious democracy? 

Religious democracy does not mean the right of self- 
government for the church, it does not mean congrega- 
tional (sometimes called democratic) church govern- ~ 
ment. In the sense in which this term is now often used 
by representatives of modernism religious democracy 
means the abolition of the rule of God in the religious 
realm, just as political democracy means the deposing of 
a king, or the renunciation of his authority in the-polit- 
ical realm. As in a truly democratic state the king, if 
there be a king, has been democratized and has only 
such authority as the citizens of the state may see fit to 
grant him (in other words, he is a king in name only), 
so religious democracy demands that the ruler — God 
—must be democratized. Modernism undertakes to 
take from Him His power and authority. It is an atti- 
tude similar to that of the servants in the parable: “We 
will not have this one to reign over us.” 

It may be superfluous to repeat here that, according 
to Scripture teaching, God is the Creator and Ruler of 
the Universe. The human family divides itself into two. 
classes, as concerns their relationship to God as His sub- 
jects. The sinner is in rebeliion against God; yet God 
has authority over him. There is for him a day of reck- — 
oning coming. The true subject of God is the one who 
has become His child by regeneration. It is true, there- 


D EMOCRACY means the rule of the people, in con- 





SPHERE OF CHURCH AND STATE 141 


fore, that God in His kingdom rules “with the consent 
of the governed.” ‘Those who do not give their consent 
to His rule are not His true subjects; they are outside 
of His kingdom. Nevertheless, it goes without saying 
that God does not derive His power and authority to 
rule from the governed. In other words, His kingdom 
is not a democracy; it is necessarily a holy autocracy. 
This, by the way, does not mean that there is any room 
for priestcraft or priestrule. While our Lord has given 
His church a degree of authority, it is to be remembered 
that the church, in the language of Scripture, is the body 
of believers. 

The fact deserves notice that the sphere of the state 
is quite different from that of the church. Its task does 
not concern the salvation and spiritual welfare of man- 
kind, not the spreading of the Gospel or the administra- 
tion of church government. Its work is confined to the 
sphere of civil government and morality. While it is 
true that religion is the true foundation for morality, 
the maintenance and propagation of religion is not with- 
in the proper sphere of the state. The state’s business 
is the regulation of civil affairs, the protection of the 
law-abiding, the punishment of evildoers, the repression 
of vice. A union of church and state is inconsistent both 
with New Testament Christianity and with true democ- 
racy. ‘The state is an institution of God in the sense 
that He has ordained its existence and it is His will that 
they who are citizens of His kingdom render willing 
obedience to the state (provided always that the state 
does not exercise tyranny over the conscience). Yet 
the fact remains that the state is not, and from the na- 
ture of things cannot be, established on the same basis 
as the church. The state is not and does not pretend to 
be the kingdom of God. The church, on the other hand, 
is God’s kingdom (in its present form) to the extent 
that it measures up to the New Testament standard; in 


142 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


other words, to the extent that God rules it and has His 


own way with it. This means that while the kingdom — 


of God is not identical with the church, it is within the 
visible church. The church, then, is established on a re- 
ligious, spiritual basis; the state is founded on the prin- 
ciples of morality, of legal right, of righteousness. 

_ The word democracy is derived from demos, which 
means the people. A modern democracy is a rule of the 
people; the people have it in their power to elect their 
own law-makers and officers for the administration of 
the government in accordance with the law. 

Strictly speaking the people in a modern democracy 
are ruled by their representatives in office. Neverthe- 
less the term democracy is properly applied, provided 
that the representatives truly represent the people and 
unselfishly serve the people’s interests. Self-seeking mo- 
tives, partisanship, bossism, corruption, “mobbings” in 
a democratic state are indications that democracy has 
not yet passed the experimental stage. Corruption in 
politics means autocracy of the most objectionable type. 
It is true that general education of the citizens is need- 
ful in a democracy; the supposition, however, that edu- 
cation will suffice to qualify for citizenship and for the 
administration of government has proved erroneous. 
Democracy depends for success primarily on the moral 
character of the citizens. So long as among the citizens 
of a state there may be those who lack in moral qualities, 
there 1s a possibility that such may be entrusted with 
responsible positions. While the state cannot demand 
Christian qualifications on the part of its officers, it is 


clear that only men of integrity and satisfactory moral. 


character can consistently serve in civil offices. 

As for the administration of the affairs of the church, 
there is no ground, Scriptural or other, for entrusting it 
to an ecclesiastical ruler, or, for that matter, to a few 
such rulers. If religious democracy meant the rejection 





Pt eed 


ee ee LP ee eed 





THE GOD OF RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY 143 


of ecclesiastical autocracy, it would be decidedly ac- 
ceptable. What it does mean is the denial of the ruler- 
ship of God, particularly His sovereignty in the sphere 
of religion. Religious democracy is, as intimated in a 
preceding paragraph, the rejection of the fundamental 
truth of God’s sovereignty. 

* Modernism demands a democratized God. The well- 
known theologian of religious democracy, Walter Rau- 
schenbusch, tells us we must save God by democratiz- 
ing Him. “The worst thing that could happen to God,” 
this writer says further, “would be to remain an auto- 
crat while the world is moving toward democracy. He 
would be dethroned with the rest [of the rulers]’’? Pres- 
ident Arthur Cushman McGiffert, of the Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, New York, says: “Democracy demands 
a God with whom men may co-operate, not to whom 
they must submit.”* “The principle of democracy,” says 
Professor Errett Gates, of the University of Chicago, 
“arose first of all in the political sphere, but it was found 
to be equally applicable in the religious sphere.”* Dr. 
Frank Crane says in a magazine article: “Are we to go 
on regarding God as an absolute monarch when the 
idea of absolute monarchy has been discarded among 
men?’ Dr. Henry Frederick Cope, the General Secre- 
tary of the Religious Education Association, in his book 
Education for Democracy, describes religion as “gradu- 
ally emerging from the notion of a dictator deity to the 
leadership of a splendid Brother in the great Human 
family.” “The democratizing of religion,’ says Profess- 
or Herbert Alden Youtz, of the Graduate School of The- 
ology, Oberlin, “is one of the significant processes that 
is taking place just now at an unprecedented rate.” 


1 A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 178. 

2 Religious Education, June, 1919, p. 161. 

3 4A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 437. 
: 4 Democratizing Theology, p. 4. 


144 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


This author proceeds to point out that this democratiz- 
ing means a radical transformation in our very concep- 
tion of religion or in “our way of conceiving the living 
God and His relationship to our world.” Again he says: 

Our Christologies and our doctrines of God are being democ- 
ratized. — There is a superficial way in which a man may democ- 
ratize his theology by going over it and substituting for the 
Monarch God, a democratized divine Ruler; substituting a Re- 
public of God for a Kingdom of God. This is necessarily an 
artificial thing to do.5 


Professor Gerald Birney Smith shows that religious 


democracy does not accept beliefs or practices imposed 


from above. This means that modernism rejects au- 
thoritative revelation. Various liberal theologians have 
pointed out that modern thought, accepting God’s im- 
manence, objects to the idea of a Father God. The new 
world-order, in their opinion, demands a God who is 
nothing beyond a “comrade in the struggle of the race,” 
as Professor Albert Parker Fitch says, or, more accu- 
rately, one whose comrades we become by working for 
social ends. And yet the doctrine of God’s fatherhood 
was only recently very popular in liberalistic circles. 
The advocates of the demand that God must be de- 
mocratized do not believe in God as He has revealed 
Himself in Scripture. They accept the modern idea of 
an immanent God.7. The God of modernists is not a 
personal Being. He is not distinct from the world but 
is a part of it. When they speak of God they evidently 
mean either a blind cosmic energy or a mere concept of 
the mind. In their opinion God is the product of our 
own thought and imagination; He exists only in our 
own mind and is, as it were, what we may see fit to 


5 Democratizing Theology, p. 5. 

6 The Biblical World, November, 1919, p. 637. 

7 On the close connection between the doctrine of immanence 
and the idea of religious democracy cf. Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, 
Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 517. 





ATHEISM OF RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY 147 


make Him.” Professor Roy Wood Sellars, of the Univer- 
sity of Michigan, says: “All of man’s ideas are human 
ideas, and so his ideas of his God and the very person- 
ality and moral outlook of that God reflect the social 
standards which are in force around the individual.’”® 
Says Walter Rauschenbusch: “The conception of God 
held by a social group is a social product.” And again: 
“Our consciousness [or conception] of God is the spir- 
itual counterpart of our social consciousness.’” 

it is strange, is it not, that a man of Walter Rauschen- 
busch’s erudition, in order to make Christianity accept- 
able to the defenders of the social gospel, can forget 
himseif to such extent as to say that God must be saved 
by democratization, and unless this is done, the world 
will dethrone Him. But to democratize God means 
nothing less than to dethrone Him, unless it be supposed 
that God, like vain man, would be willing to occupy the 
throne while He is shorn of that for which the throne 
stands, namely of His power and authority. To democ- 
ratize God is, as John Haynes Holmes rightly says, “‘to 
shift the basis of religion from God to man”; it is to ac- 
cept a humanitarian instead of a theistic basis for re- 
ligion. In its last essence this can mean only one thing, 
namely the denial of God. The God of our fathers is de- 
throned — speaking now from the viewpoint of the rep- 
resentatives of religious democracy —and, as a recent 
writer said, He is replaced by a God elected on a pflat- 
form of approved social and political ideals.'° 

Can there be an excuse, we must ask, for representa- 
tives of religious liberalism still to use the name of God 
and claim to be theologians, when their god is a mere 
concept of the mind? The God of modernism is a being 
which comes, as it were, under the guise of God, pro- 


8 The Next Step in Religion, p. 161. 
9 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, pp. 167 and 179. 
10 The Unpartizan Review, January-February, 1920. ~ 


146 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


claiming that the basis of religion is in man and that 
there is no other God but man and his great ideas. «Is 
it possible that the belief in such a god as that is sup- 
posed to justify the term religious democracy? 

The question is here pertinent: How can modern re- 
ligionists worship a God whom they have, suppositively, 
democratized? Some of them, be it said to their credit, 
have declared that they cannot. A modernist who is a 
member of an evangelical church says: “Personally I 
have gotten to the point where | regard all worship as 
idolatry.”11. The denial of a personal, almighty God 
makes worship indeed idolatrous. The representatives 
of modernism fail to give us a good reason why a de- 
mocratized God should be worshipped. Such worship, 
being of an idolatrous nature, cannot be taken seriously. 
Necessarily it has degrading results. 

To democratize God is to discard true religion. The 
representatives of religious democracy hold that democ- 
racy itself is religion and that it is the only religion that 
is worth while; there is, in their opinion, no religion but 
democracy. This is the denial of religion. We are told 
that there is no difference between democracy and reli- 
gious democracy, and that the former is identical with 
the latter. “Democracy is a social faith; it is a religious 
faith,’ says Professor Theodore Gerald Soares of the 
University of Chicago.’? Gerald Birney Smith is of the 
opinion that “the triumph of democracy is now the chief 
concern of the church and all theological training should 
be to that end.’** “I worship God,’ says Professor 
George Albert Coe, of the Union Theological Seminary, 
“who, breathing himself everywhere into the human 
clod, makes it a spirit, a social craving, even the spirit of 
humanity, yes, the spirit of a possible world society. 


11 Friends’ Intelligencer, September 6, 1919. 
12 The American Journal of Theology, 1919, p. 124. 
138 The Biblical Worid, May, 1918, p. 302. Italics - mine. 





“DEMOCRACY OF GOD” 147 


I bow my spirit before the Spirit of the world democracy 
that is to be.’'* Dr. Coe and other writers on the subject 
have discarded the use of the phrase “kingdom of God” 
in favor of “democracy of God.” But is not this a mis- 
nomer? If the democratizing process include God Him- 
self; if religious democracy be simply democracy, it is 
difficult to see a good reason for speaking of the democ- 
racy of God. 

Religious democracy is closely related to the so-called 
social Christianity. Edward Scribner Ames says rightly 
that modern religion “is referred to as the religion of 
the spirit, as social Christianity, and as the religion of 
democracy.”?* The opinion that democracy is religion is 
founded partially on the claim that Jesus was “the first 
great democrat,” and that the burden of His message 
was the establishment of a proper form of civil govern- 
ment. Walter Rauschenbusch intimates that had Jesus 
lived for thirty years longer He would presumably have 
been more successful in that which He undertook to do."* 
There is no objection to the idea that all men are ina 
sense religious; it is quite a different matter, however, 
to identify religion with democracy and assert that all 
men, being religious, are democratic in sentiment. Those 
who make such assertions would do well to remember 
that not all countries have a democratic government. 

While Walter Rauschenbusch and other representa- 
tives of religious democracy commend worship and sanc- 
tion the existence of the church, they do not hold that 
the church should be a permanent factor in a true de- 
mocracy. The church, in their opinion, is useful only as 
a possible medium to educate the masses into a democ- 
racy such as they desire. A true democracy, they be- 
lieve, has no need for the church as a separate organiza- 


14 Religious Education, October, 1916, p. 379. Italics mine. 
15 The New Orthodoxy, p. 10. 
16 4 Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 266. 


148 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


tion. ‘They favor an ultimate union of religion and state. 
Their position on this point, however, differs radically 
from the older state-churchism of Europe in which state 
and church, though closely united, were separate organ- 
izations. It should be observed that, if God is democra- 
tized and there is no religion but democracy, the exist- 
ence of a particular religious organization is uncalled- 
for; it is in fact precluded. For a democratic state of 
that description it would be inconsistent to permit vari- 
ous religious organizations within its borders. “Both 
dogmatism [speaking of evangelical Christianity] and 
ecclesiasticism [1i. e., insistence on the right of religious 
organization| are in their inmost nature sectarian ;” says 
Professor Coe, “they have always divided Christians 
from one another.” Religious democracy, it is supposed, 
cannot tolerate anything that divides people. It is need- 
ful therefore, the same author insists, that we advance 
“to a fully social position,’’’ that is to say, a position 
which ultimately knows neither dogma nor church. This 


author says further “A particular religious fraternity — 


within the community, though its doors be wide open to 
everybody, is not, and cannot be, the solution of this 
problem.”’!® 

Religious democracy, as advocated by many liberal- 
istic writers, does not make a distinction in principle be- 
tween Christian and non-Christian, believer and unbe- 
liever, saint and sinner; hence it can well spare the serv- 
ices of the church. We again let the defenders of a 
“democracy of religion” speak for themselves. Henry T. 
Hodgkin, a prominent British “Friend” of the liberal- 
istic type, says: | 

The point at which to begin is the basal conviction that every 
man is essentially religious.19—JIt is true that there are people 


17 4A Secial Theory of Religious Education, p. °262. 
18 The same, p. 323. 
19 Lay Religion, p. 54. 





A PROPOSED MODERNIST STATE CHURCH 149 


who say quite positively that they are not religious, that they do 
not know this instinct, etc. It may fairly be asked, however, 
whether this apparent absence of a “religious instinct” is not due 
to a complete misconception of religion — the very misconception 
we are here seeking to remove.29 — Religion is a necessary part 
of every man’s life. That is not to say that every man is religious 
in the conventional sense — far from it, thank God! It simply 
means that any idea of religion which is limited to the few [the 
Christian believers, for example] is, from the nature of the case, 
false. — Democratic religion....claims sinner not less than saint.21 


It follows that there is no longer a real need for the ex- 
istence of the church. 

Religious democracy, or social Christianity, demands 
that our religious institutions must ultimately be brought 
under community control. Joseph Ernest McAfee, who 

is holding an important office in a religious organization 
and is the author of a book on Religion and the New 
Amerwan Democracy, says: | 

If American society perfect its democracy, its religious insti- 
tutions must come under community control. This implies that all 
sect labels must come off and sectarian control must be abolished. 
This is essential from the point of view of democracy. Enlight- 
ened Christian forces should join with democracy to transform 
the present order and abolish the sectarian system.2” 

These sentences might be taken to mean that all 
Christian sects should be asked to unite into one relig- 
ious body. This is not the opinion advocated by this au- 
thor, however. His demand goes much farther. Hear 
him: — 

Sectarianism would not be abolished with the merging of all 
Christian sects into one. That might only aggravate its evils. A 
strong sect can do more mischief than a weak one. What democ- 
racy needs to complete its program, and what Christianity needs 


for its emancipation, is the abolition of the whole sect program 
and the eradication of the whole sectarian principle and spirit. 


20 The same, p. 195. 

21 The same, p. 32. Italics mine. 

22 Article “Can Christianity Tolerate the Church?” in The New 
Republic, January 18, 1919. 


150 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


This means, as this author takes pains to point out, 
that the Christian church as an institution or organiza- 
tion must cease to exist. “A real world-society.is not 
possible with a divisive, competing, warring religious so- 
ciety,” says Dr. Henry F. Cope.** President McGiffert 
writes: “Democracy demands the abandonment of this 
traditional notion of religion and the recognition of it as 
a communal affair having to do with the salvation of the 
community, that is, in ordinary language, with the es- 
tablishment of true liberty and human brotherhood.’’** 


One would suppose that “social Christianity” and 
“religious democracy” stand for toleration and not for 
religious tyranny. The contrary is true, however, as 
may presently be shown. The charge of intolerance is 
sometimes made against evangelical Christianity. We 
readily admit that the Christian church cannot take the 
position of general toleration in the sense that she could 
ignore the difference between the Bible faith and the 
modern rejection of the faith. That every man has a right 
to his own religious belief is true in the sense that the 
truth must not and cannot be forced upon any one. As 


citizens of a free state we properly demand and concede > 


the right of religious liberty. But this does not mean 
that the church should take an attitude of indifference 
and neutrality toward the Christian faith, or that believ- 
ers could religiously fellowship non-believers. President 
George E. Horr recently remarked: “It is frequently 
said that a man has a right to think as he pleases. That 


is just what no living soul has any right to do. His only — 


right is to think according to the facts of the case and 
according to the laws of thought.” No one, in fact, has 
a right to think wrongfully and come to hurt. But, on 
the other hand, the fact must be recognized that truth 


23 Religious Education, 1919, p. 223. 
24 The same, June, 1919, p. 161. 





ee ea” eee ee 


DIFFERENCES MUST BE RECOGNIZED 151 


cannot be instilled by any other means than teaching 
and persuasion. The attempt to spread the truth by co- 
ercion or persecution is contrary to Christian principles. 
Evangelical Christendom demands of the state general 
toleration on the basis of free citizenship. But, as al- 
ready said, the fact must not be overlooked that the 
church cannot take the position that all men, whether 
they are believers or not, have a right to membership in 
the church, or that ministers of the church may preach 
modernism. Such a position would make the church 
lose its Christian character. Even the Masonic Order 
is reckoning with the fact that not all men stand for Ma- 
sonic principles. And the Unitarians do not and cannot 
fellowship those who insist on Scriptural orthodoxy. 
This is not intolerance. “How can two walk together 
except they be agreed?” 


Evangelical Christianity, then, is identified with the 
principle of liberty of conscience and of general tolera- 
tion within the sphere of the state. The state cannot 
consistently espouse the cause of any particular relig- 
ious sect; it cannot assume the task of the church. For 
the state to admit only Christian professors to citizenship 
would be as inconsistent as if the church opened her 
doors to non-Christians or, in other words, if she dis- 
carded the faith. 


The representatives of modernism would have us be- 
lieve that evangelical orthodoxy is antagonistic to de- 
mocracy. Now if by “democracy” they mean religious 
democracy, as this term is used by modernists, we will- 
ingly concede this point. Liberalistic leaders do not 
properly distinguish between religious democracy and 
political democracy, and therefore decry the Bible faith 
as the enemy of democracy. According to Professor 
William Frederic Bade, of the Pacific School of Religion, 
the orthodox view of the authoritative nature of Scrip- 


152 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ture “is the last bulwark of autocracy. 25 Gerald Birney 
Smith says: ; 


An autocratic [i. e., evangelical] religion cannot prepare citi- 
sens for democracy. — If, submitting to the authority of Scripture, 
we are training men to think of Christianity as something un- 
changeably there by divine decree....we are training men in au- 
tocracy.26 — We cannot maintain one kind of authority in our 
political life and a totally different kind of authority in religious 
life unless we wish religion and democracy to be mutually distrust- 
ful. To insist on blind submission in religion is a spiritual prepara- 
tion for blind submission to autocratic power in the state; it is fun- 
damentally opposed to the ideals of democracy.27—A church that 


hoids to orthodox yiews belongs to the old regime rather than to. 


the age of democracy.*8 


This means that representatives of religious liberal- 
ism denounce orthodoxy as the enemy of democracy and 
claim that evangelical Christians who accept the Scrip- 
tures as God’s Word are not truly democratic. It is in- 
sinuated by modernists that orthodox believers reason 
in a fashion something like this: God, the All-mighty, 
All-wise, All-loving, All-righteous, has autocratic pow- 
er, therefore there ought to be on earth autocrats who 
lord it over their fellows. It is assumed by representa- 
tives of modernism that those who recognize the sover- 
eignty of God and teach unquestioning submission to 
Him, cannot be truly democratic in sentiment. Is not 
this a most outlandish insinuation? Or, is it true that 
the evangelical Christians of our iand cannot consistent- 
ly support our democratic institutions? Do they favor 
autocratic government? Is not the contrary true, that 
the very back-bone of true democracy are the ones who, 
instead of attempting the democratization of God, will- 
ingly submit to His sovereignty? Is not democracy a 
miserable failure where the belief in a sovereign God is 


25 The American Journal of Theology, 1919, p. 234. 

26 The Biblical World, July, 1919, p. 422. 

27 The American Journal of Theology, July, 1917, p. 346. 
28 The Biblical World, May, 1919, p. 255. 





LORDSHIP OF CHRIST DENIED 153 


banished from the people’s thought? Does not Russia 
at the present time give us an object lesson showing the 
real meaning of the democratization of God? The sup- 
position that, since there ought to be no autocracy on 
earth, it follows that God also should be shorn of auto- 
cratic power, is absurd. 

Religious democracy, in short, demands of us that 
we renounce the sovereignty of God and the Lordship 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. It would assign to our Lord 
the office of mere democratic leadership. “What kind of 
a leader do we need?” asks Henry T. Hodgkin, and his 
answer is: “Viewed from the standpoint of democracy, 
we may say that we need a leader who is one with the 
led, not coming from above but raised from the ranks, 
and that he must be the servant of the community, not 
its ‘boss.’’’® The same writer says, the orthodox view of 
Jesus Christ involves that “He is not one of us.” “Such 
a leader,” he says further, “cannot be in a real sense a 
part of our everyday life, still less can He be the servant 
of the community.’*° This is the oft repeated liberalistic 
claim that we must “make Jesus real” by denying His 
deity. It is argued that a divine Jesus is not “one of us.” 
This claim rests on the false premise that Jesus was not 
both human and divine. But Scripture teaches that 
Christ was human (“one of us”) as well as divine, very 
man and very God. It is impossible to accept the opin- 
ion that a merely human, failing Jesus would be more 
real. Dean Shailer Mathews has well said on this point: 
“We can never make Jesus real by reducing him to the 
level of people with whom we gossip over our back-yard 
fence.’’*1 This statement is all the more remarkable be- 
cause Dr. Mathews does not defend the orthodox doc- 
trine of the deity of Christ, though obviously he percieves 


nD Lay Religion, p. 182. 
30 The same, p. 183. 
31 The Biblical World, May, 1920, p. 226. 


154 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


that, even from his point of view, the process of SS 
izing” Jesus has been carried too far. 


The thought that a democratic leader, vaetea) of 


divine Savior and Redeemer, is needed, is quite unaccept- 
able. Even the atheistic, anti-religious social democrats 
of Europe admire Jesus as a (supposed) democratic leader. 
If Jesus were nothing beyond that, it would be difficult 
to see why so much should be made of His leadership. 
Unprejudiced Socialists admit that Karl Marx and Au- 
gust Bebel were greater leaders in the field of politics 
and Socialism than Jesus. It is, therefore, difficult to 


see why men who see in Jesus nothing more than a lead- | 


er of democracy, cling to the Christian name. Modern- 
ists would have us profess Christianity but deny the 
Lordship of Christ; they ask us to renounce the Lord- 
ship of the Master, but cling to the ethical leadership of 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

Now a true believer in our Lord, who has’ been saved 
through His grace, will at any time lay down his life 
rather than deny the faith by renouncing the Lordship 
of the Savior. Not only must the believer realize that 
-without Christ’s divine Lordship there could not be sal- 
vation, but he will count the unconditional surrender to 
Him his greatest privilege, the only true freedom. The 
Apostle Paul loved to refer to himself as a bondservant, 
literally a “bondslave” of his Lord, and again he refers 
to Him in the well-known words: ‘Whose I am, and 
whom I serve.” Christianity minus faith in Christ as 
the divine Redeemer, minus recognizing His Lordship, 
is necessarily either laughing stock for the prince of 
darkness, or it is a mighty tool in his hands. 

From the view that evangelical Christianity is antag- 
onistic to true democracy there is only a short step to 
the demand that orthodox Christianity should not be 
tolerated in a modern democracy. Such demands have 
in fact been made and apparently, without a protest by 





PROPOSED UNION OF CHURCH AND STATE 155 


representatives of modernism. “A humanist’s religion,” 
observes Professor Roy Wood Sellars, “can admit no 
cunning division into the things which are God’s and the 
things which are Caesar’s.’*? Joseph Ernest McAfee 
says: 

No one who believes in essential Christianity should resist the 
process of bringing our religious institutions under community con- 
trol. — Religion, like every other universal human concern, must be 
brought under community control, if democracy is fully to vindi- 
cate itself. A church bearing a sect name and exploiting society in 
the interests of a sect idea cannot be tolerated by a thoroughgoing 
democracy. Religion is too vital a social function for its institu- 
tions to be monopolized by private corporations.33 

The program of the more advanced modernism, then, 
provides for a liberalistic state religion, a union of relig- 
ion and state. It will be recalled that such was also the 
position of Karl Marx and other Socialist leaders. The 
new state religion is to comprise Christians, non-Chris- 
tians and atheists — anti-Christians — alike. Yet it is 
to be by no means doctrinally indifferent. An organization 
that stands for the democratization of God and the denial 
of Christ’s Lordship is naturally inimical and hostile to 
Christianity. No believing Christian could join himself 
to a religious world society of this character. 

Dr. McAfee, it is interesting to notice, based his de- 
mand for the abolishment of the Christian church on the 
claim that Christianity will fare better if the church can 
be eliminated. The church, he thinks has a “demoraliz- 
ing” effect on Christianity. “In the nature of the case,” 
he says, “an ecclesiastical organization cannot serve the 
purpose for which Christianity is in the world. Being a 
spirit and not an institution, the attempt to institution- 
alize Christianity sacrifices its genius.— An official 
Christian Church by its very nature must be un-Chris- 


82 The Next Step in Religion, p. 213. 
38 The New Republic, January 18, 1919. 


156 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


tian.’** In other words, the attempt is made to justify 


the proposed suppression of the Christian church on the ~ 


supposition that the elimination of the church would 
prove a blessing. Now this was essentially the position 
of the persecutors in all ages. Even Nero claimed he 
was doing a good work by putting to death all Chris- 
tians. In the dark ages the persecutors advanced pre- 
cisely the same argument as the modern representatives 
of religious democracy. They claimed that great bless- 
ing weuld result if the persecuted ones, instead of suf- 
fering for their faith, would accept the faith of the dom- 
inant authorities. Therefore persecution was believed 
to be justified. 

Is it not strange indeed that they who claim to repre- 
sent democracy and toleration propose the suppression 
of the Christian faith? And at the same time representa- 
tives of religious liberalism accuse the defenders of the 
old Bible faith of intolerance. Dean Shailer’ Mathews 
brands the Christian believers of the Biblical type, as 
represented by the Bible Schools, as reactionaries and 
says, if their efforts should succeed “Protestantism would 
become dangerous to intellectual and religious liberty.”*° 
It is the old story. Evangelical Christianity, insisting 
on the right to stand for definite doctrine, is accused of 
an attitude that is inimical to religious liberty. The 
fact is willfully overlooked that influential modernists 
are favoring the suppression of the church and of the 
Christian faith as well as of every other religious creed. 
Religious democracy — modernism — and general social- 
ization are to be established by secular means. Relig- 
ion is to be “placed under community control.” 

While noted modernists in the church accuse the 
fundamentalists of opposing religious liberty, for the 
reason that they do not recognize modernism as iden- 


34 The same, January 18, 1919. 
85 The Bibiical }Vurld, April, 1917, p. 202. 


ee ee 





FUNDAMENTALISM FOR FREEDOM 157 


tical with the Christian faith, it is interesting to notice 
that not all liberalists are of one opinion with Dean 
Shailer Mathews on this point. Henry Neumann, of the 
Ethical Culture Society, writes: 


The fundamentalists are not trying to suppress freedom of 
pulpit speech. They are doing the very different thing of de- 
manding consistency within their own churches. The funda- 
mentalists do not attempt to forbid the liberal preacher to speak. 
The preacher. is free to utter his ideas anywhere that he pleases, 
with one exception. He is asked not to utter them in a church 
whose purity of doctrine the church authorities are expected to 
safeguard. A Unitarian church, I imagine, would not be con- 
tent to remain long under a pastor who would come to share the 
religious beliefs of a Bryan or a Papini. The fundamentalist is 


no different. He holds that you may think that Jesus was as 
much a mortal being as Lincoln. Believe and say so if you will, 


but not in a church which is dedicated to the idea that Jesus 
was the only Son of God.36 


36 The Christian Register, March 13, 1924, p. 245. 


XV 
THis NEW VIEW OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 
nurture and education as one of her chief interests. 


No words need be lost here concerning its import- 
ance. Modern liberalism has substituted religious edu- 


T = Christian church has always regarded Christian 


cation for Christian education. While it is true that in- 


conservative circles the term religious education is some- 
times used synonymously with Christian education, in 
genera] modern usage religious education has acquired 
a meaning that differs radically from the meaning which 
it had in Christendom before the rise of modernism. © 

Representatives of religious liberalism tell us that 
Christian education of the older type produces “sec- 
ondhand religion.’ A recent writer says: “second- 
hand religion is no religion. It is a wretched make- 
shift.”? This is true, if by this term is meant a mere 
knowledge of the Christian message without the person- 
al acceptance of it, or a form of religion without a vital 
relationship to God. There are, however, liberalistic 
writers who use the phrase “secondhand religion” in a 
new sense, as will directly be shown. 

Modern theology comes to us with the claim that the 
Bible is not to be accepted as God’s Word. The message 
of Christianity, we are told, is of a social nature and nec- 


essariy varies and changes with the nature of the par-. 


ticular social improvements that are supposed to be in 
order. Since Christianity, in the opinion of modernists, 
has no fixed, definite message of truth or doctrine, a 
Christian religious teacher should not profess to have 


1 Hodgkin, Lay Religion, p. 41. 





MEANING OF RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 159 


definite religious truth to offer. Any claim of this sort, 
they tell us, can only produce secondhand religion in 
those who are taught. The way of orthodoxy, says Dr. 
Herbert Alden Youtz, of Oberlin Theological Seminary, 
is “to give the people a secondhand account of God.’ 
Modern interpreters of religious education tell us that 
children should not be left under the impression that 
there is definite Christian truth in which they may be in- 

structed. Professor George Albert Coe, of the Union 
Theological Seminary, New York, who is perhaps the 
most prominent American writer on this subject, argues 
that we ought not “to impose beliefs [or doctrines] upon 
children.’”* “The aim of instruction,’ he says further, 
“is not to impose truth but to promote growth [namely, 
growth toward social efficiency]. The instruction must 
be emptied of its traditional tmplications of telling pupils 
what to believe. To impose such beliefs upon a child [in 
other words, to tell a child what to believe] is not to 
promote the growth of a free personality.”* This author 
says turther: 

When we have made clear to ourselves what sort of world 
the Father and we as his children desire [in other words, in what 
direction to bend our endeavors for social improvement], must 
not our next concern be that the young also should desire it? 
What boots it if they know all Scripture, all doctrine, etc., if they 
have not both the forward look and the sort of desire that can 


reconstruct a world? — Let the curriculum be drawn from any 
sort of material.5 


Similar views have been expressed by other advo- 
cates of modern theology. The supposition that the Bi- 
ble is the source of religious truth, is considered out of 
date by modernists. Liberalistic writers agree on the 


2 Democratizing Theology, p. 12. 

3 A Social Theory of Religious Education, 1917, p. 65. 
4 The same, p. 1. Italics mine. 

5 The same, p. 66. 


160 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


point that the source of the divine is world-wide. A re- 
cent writer says on this point: 
To find the divine we must trace it out through all its devi- 
ous course. To hear its message we must listen to the voice of 
the grass and birds, of the winds and of the stars, and to the still 
small voice within our own heart. That is poetical, no doubt; 
but how shall we make out any intelligible meaning in all these 
multitudinous voices and myriad revelations? There is too much 
discord and contradiction and confusion. There is good and 
there is evil; there is wisdom and there is folly; there is the per- 
manent and there is the fleeting. Shall we put it all on one level 
and say: “All is Truth, all is Mind, all is God?” How about the 
evil? Is that merely an illusion of mortal mind? Surely we. 
cannot trifle with evil like that; it is too deep and tragical to be 
simply set aside by a wave of the hand. Or if we want to dis- 
tinguish, what shall be our standard of judgment?6 
Since, then, according to religious liberalism, the di- 
vine is scattered, as it were, throughout the whole world, 
the curriculum for religious education is to be drawn 
“from any sort of material.” It must not be drawn from 
the Bible as the one true source of religious enlighten- 
ment, nor from books based on the Bible, such as the 
catechism, for this will give the pupil a fixed or definite 
idea of religious truth and the result, we are told, will be 
secondhand religion. A Unitarian preacher says: “The 
fault is that we have asked people to begin their relig- 
ious life by accepting certain teachings about God. But 
this is just a reversal of the natural order. When we 
make an acquaintance we do not presume to know all 
about him at the outset. Rather we wait to see to what 
extent our confidence may be well placed.” In other 
words, the child is to settle these questions without tak- 
ing either the word of the teacher or the word of Scrip- 
ture for it. “The influence of the catechism [or of defi- 
nite religious instruction] in tending to stereotype the 
idea of God upon the minds of the young,” says Henry 


8 The Reformed Church Review, 1918, p. 244. 





ARE CHILDREN TO BE THE TEACHERS? 161 


T. Hodgkin, “is wholly and utterly bad. In the very 
subject on which children should be our teachers, we 
presume to teach them.”* Do we hear rightly, then, that 
the children should be the religious teachers of their 
elders? Our Lord commended certain traits in the char- 
acter of children, it is true; the point in question how- 
ever is, did He appoint the children as the religious 
teachers? Did He charge the aposties to tell the world 
to listen to the message of babes, or did He give the a- 
‘postles a message of salvation to proclaim? 


It is somewhat difficult to see wherein the task of the 
liberalistic religious teacher consists. Not only does he 
decry the authority of Scripture but he is not supposed 
to give the pupil the result of his own endeavor to find 
the divine. In this make-believe religious instruction the 
pupil himself must by his own effort gather the divine 
from world-wide sources. Is it possible, one is tempted 
to ask, that any normal person is taking such views of 
religious education seriously? The sum and substance 
of all this learned talk about modern religious education 
is, that the children of Christian parents should be per- 
mitted to grow up in heathen ignorance and darkness. 
True, the modern religionists, as a rule, have no objec- 
tions against instruction in morality, but the same may 
be said of representatives of non-Christian religious sys- 
tems. 


It may be worth while to notice that among the rad- 
ical modernists there is at least one who openly rejected 
the thought that the young should not be given religious 
instruction. Walter Rauschenbusch says: “If every in- 
dividual had to work out his idea of God on the basis of 
his own experiences and intuitions only, it would be a 
groping quest, and most of us would see only the occa- 
sional flitting of a distant light. By the end of our life 


7 Lay Religion, London, 1918, p. 196. 


162 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


we might have arrived at the stage of voodooism and 
necromancy.’’* Another liberalistic writer says: “Neg- 
lect of religious instruction, in order not to bias a grow- 
ing mind, is usually laziness camouflaged as liberalism. 
What other subject is neglected for a like reason?—A 
home without any religion, however liberal, is a danger- 
ous place for a child to be born in.’” } 

The modern view of religious education is defended 
in various books on the subject published in recent years. 
Prominent and representative among these books is the 
one by Professor Coe, from which we have quoted in a 
preceding paragraph. This author identifies religion 
with social reconstruction and democracy. Hence he de- 
fines religious faith as the endeavor to reconstruct soci- 
ety through the means of reforms of various kinds. Re- 
ligious education is interpreted in social terms; it is iden- 
tified with social education. Now this is the general po- 
sition of religious liberalism on the point of. religious ed- 
ucation. The leading recent writers on this subject are 
defending this view. The purpose in religious educa- 
tion, says Dr, William Irvin Lawrance, of the Unitarian 
Church, “is to socialize our pupils.’ And again this 
writer Says: 

Whatever culture really enlarges the sympathies and multi- 
plies contacts and stimulates to service is to be classed as relig- 
ious education.1°—- There is urgent need that religious educators 
break away from conventional usages and recast their curricula 
along broader lines. What may be taught? Everything that is 
true either as fact or as illumination.11 

Religious Education, the organ of the Religious Edu- 
cation Association, says editorially: “We must get away 
from the concept of religious education as a secluded 
area oi interest for the people who wish to add the facts 


8 4A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 168. 

9 The Christian Register, July 8, 1920, p. 19. 

10 The Social Emphasis in Religious Education, p. 36. 
11 The same, p. 34. 





WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EDUCATION? 163 


of religion of the child’s curriculum. Religious educa- 
tion is as broad as life itself....it is the science of hu- 
man growth.”?? In other words, all worth while educa- 
tion is religious education. It is supposed that the 
church, when engaging in religious education, should 
have for her aim not the dissemination of New Testa- 
ment truth but the socialization of the pupils. 


The interests of religious education in the modern 
sense are represented in America principally by the Re-- 
ligious Education Association. There is plenty of evi- 
dence to show that this Association is representative of 
the modern religious education movement, as advocated 
by the authors quoted in previous paragraphs. And va- 
rious denominations, as well as the Federal Council of 
Churches, have officially recognized it and are working 
with it. The Committee on Education of the Interna- 
tional Sunday School Association have published a state- 
ment in which — having previously referred to “invalu- 
able agencies” in American secular education — they 
say: “The field of religious education has such an agency 
in the Religious Education Association. Such associa- 
tions should be encouraged as essential to the develop- 
ment of a scientific program for a democratic people.” 


It may be worth while to observe that the Religious 
Education Association owes its existence principally to 
William R. Harper, the first President of the University 
of Chicago. From its beginning it stood for religious 
liberalism. “In the Religious Education Association 
Unitarians have been welcome from the first and have 
had a voice in its councils and occupied official posi- 
tions,” says a Unitarian writer. In 1913, after the annu- 
al meeting of this Association had been held in Cleve- 
land, Minot Simons, the Unitarian minister of that city, 
wrote: 


12 Vol. XIV, 1919, p. 290. 


164 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


I am deeply impressed with the fact that the Religious Edu- 
cation Association is one of the most liberalizing forces of the 
modern religious world. I have been quite amazed at the theo- 
logical radicalism which I have heard during the past week. — 
The R. E. A. deserves our support as Unitarians because it is 
doing our work to an extent that we little realize. 

Of the annual meeting of the same association, for 
1919, which was held in Detroit, with Samuel A. Eliot, 
President of the American Unitarian Association, as 
chairman, a report was published in the eastern Unitari- 
an church paper. “Can we do better,” asks the Uni- 
tarian writer of this report, “than to give thorough and 
hearty co-operation to the Religious Education Associa- 
tion which welcomes us without reserve or discrimina- 
tion, and which preaches our message of education in re- 
ligion with such persuasiveness and power?’ Dr. Du- 
rant Drake, Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College, 
recently recommended the R. E. A. as the most important 
iiberalizing agency of the day.** 7 

The membership of the Religious Education Associa- 
tion is not confined to those who profess the Christian 
faith. This association, says Charles W. Eliot, one of 
the prominent American modernist leaders, “acts on the 
principle: diversity in opinion or belief, unity in conduct 
or action.” It is open to all men and women of what- 
ever religion or denomination who “desire to promote 
moral and religious ideals in education, and educational 
ideals in religion.” Henry F. Cope, the General Secre- 
tary of the Association, says: 

Its membership constitutes a world-group united in a com- 
mon social life and forming a common fellowship of aim and 
service. This aim lifted men and women [not only Christian 


men and women but also those of other religions] above the [re- 
ligious] controversies which had hitherto divided them, so that 


13 The Christian ae fae April 3, 1919, p. 13. 
14 The same, July 17, 1919. 
15 The same, May A 1919. 





THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION SOCIETY 165 


in the Association representatives of the great religious faiths 
[both Christian and heathen] find themselves standing on a 
common platform. Its members represent almost every -great 
religious division. They are one in the common faith that life’s 
ultimate product is spiritual and is to be realized [not by super- 
natural means, or divine grace, but] by those known and order- 
ly processes of development which we call educational.”’16 


This is plain language. Educational religion or re- 
ligious education takes the place of supernatural salva- 
tion. This modern world-movement does not stand for 
‘anything particular in the way of religion. It is so 
broad in principle and scope that it cannot take a defi- 
nite stand in favor of any existing type of religion. With 
pride the Religious Education Association points to its 
universal broadness that embraces even heathen relig- 
ions. In short, the R. E. A. takes a position of neutrality 
in matters religious, though it bears a religious name. 
The devil-worshipers in darkest Africa may not be rep- 
resented in it, but presumably they would be eligible 
for membership, 

Modern religious education does not have a religious 
message or definite religious truth to teach. Just as, 
from the liberalistic viewpoint, not the content of theol- 
ogy, but the method is the principal thing, so also in re- 
ligious education the method is supposed to be all in all. 
Hence Christian believers and representatives of virtual 
atheism as well as Buddhists and Confucianists are in- 
vited to join hands in this work. Schools of religion — 
“religious community schools’ —have been organized 
in America in which anything unacceptable to non- 
Christians is carefully avoided. But the fact remains, 
as Herbert Alden Youtz has aptly said, that “excessive 
emphasis upon practical methods often conceals spirit- 
ual deadness. Here ts the fatal weakness of much relig- 
ious education.” Yet unless theology has a definite re- 


16 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 386. 
17 Democratizing Theology, p. 32. Italics mine. 


166 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


1igous message, it is but natural to consider method the 
principal thing. : 

The modern religious education mibventent. then, de- 
fines religion as socialization and identifies religious edu- 
cation with social education. Professor H. W. Holmes 
describes religious education as “an effort to establish re- 
ligion as a unifying and creating force in socwl evolu- 
tion.”’*® The General Secretary of the Religious Educa- 
tion Association says: “The program of religious educa- 
tion is nothing less than the reconstruction of society 
through the wills of men.”!® And again this writer ob- 
serves: “Today religious education is concerned with 
the whole program of education so far as it deals with 
persons as religious persons and so far as it looks to a 
religious order of society.”?® Now a religious order of 
society, in the language of liberals, is the realization of 
what is known as social reconstruction — the religion of 
democracy. All endeavor that serves this:end, “looking 
to a religious [i. e., democratic] order of society” of this 
kind, is considered religious work. Social service is iden- 
tifed with religion. It goes without saying that all legit- 
imate, worth-while work is social service and, consid- 
ered from this viewpoint, is religion. A person engaged 
in such work is claimed by modernists to be a religious 
person. This means that religion and religious educa- 
tion is everything, and nothing definite. Education, in 
so far as it has to do with teaching doctrinal, supernatu- 
ral religion, is not recognized as a worth while phase of 
religious education; modernism is decidedly antagonistic 
to definite doctrinal teaching. 

The serious pertinent question is, How is it to be, ex- 
plaineu tnat men and women who profess evangelical 
Christianity can make common cause with this modern 








18 The Christian Register, August 5, 1920, p. 13. 
19 Religious Education, 1919, p. 224. 
20 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 384. 





AIDING THE CAUSE OF MODERNISM 167 


world-movement and with the Religious Education As- 
sociation in particular? It cannot be denied that the 
true character of this organization is clearly recognized 
by religious liberalists. Is there a possibility that the 
evangelical men who consent to labor with this society 
are not as well informed about its character and aims as 
are the liberalists? Obviously their support of this 
movement is entirely inexcusable. Some may say that 
while they have accepted the invitation to speak in one 
’ of their annual meetings, no fault can be found with the 
contents of their addresses. The point however is, as 
thinking persons generally know, that by your very 
presence as a speaker you made your influence count in 
favor of what this society stands for. Is it possible that 
there are conservatives who fail to see this point? We 
have, in passing, never heard that any speaker in those 
meetings had the courage to give testimony for the Bi- 
ble truth against modernism. To doso would be contrary 
to the rules and would not be permitted. 


Chautauqua, an institution having its origin in a 
camp-meeting, has always considered religion one of its 
interests. It is generally known that in more recent 
years some of the Chautauquas have been conducted in 
a way highly satisfactory to liberals. Particularly is this 
true of.the original Chautauqua Assembly. Of the ses- 
sion of 1920 a Unitarian writer says: 

The specific interests of religion have been in the hands of 
such men as Dr. Cornelius Woelfkin, Dr. Alexander J. Grieve, 
President Lynn Harold Hough, Bishop W. F. McDowell, Dean 
Shailer Mathews, and Dr. F. F. Shannon. Unitarians coming 
away from the great Amphi-theatre service each Sunday morning 
are wont to exclaim with satisfaction.?1 

Thomas M. Roberts, a Unitarian, says of the same 
session at Chautauqua: “I was so pleased with the leav- 


21 The Christian Register, August 26, 1920, p. 19. 


168 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ening process going on there, that I should like our Uni- 
tarian people to continue to affiliate with other denomi- 
nations in this very important educational work.’?? A- 
gain a Unitarian writer says in the Christian Register: 


The quiet influence of our representatives at Chautauqua, en- 
tering in friendly spirit into all good works there going forward, 
has disarmed sectarian suspicion and led many to see the real 
meaning and purpose of the Unitarian movement. — It is signifi- 
cant that our entrance into organic relations with other churches 
at this large centre of religious activity is through the channel of 
religious education.2% , 


Dr. Durant Drake, speaking of modern religious edu-. 


cation, says: “The great hope of the church lies in edu- 
cation. When education is tenfold as prevalent, there 
must be either a great revolution in the church or a great 
withdrawal from it.”** It can not be doubted that mod- 
ern religious education, if it be approved of the church 
in general, would result in a complete liberalistic revolu- 
tion and the eclipse of “the faith once for all delivered to 
the saints.” 








*2 The Christian Regsster, September 30, 1920, p. 16. 
23 The same, p. 16. 


24 Krom an Address, as reported in The Christian Register, 
July 17, 1919. 





XVI 


THE MODERNIST VIEW OF MISSIONS 


either indifferent or antagonistic to Christian mis- 
: sions. In recent years there has been a change in 

its attitude to missions. Liberalism, as represented by 
those who have accepted modern theology, is now pro- 
fessing friendliness to mission work. This change of at- 
titude is due to a new view regarding the nature and 
purpose of missions which has come to prevail in liberal- 
istic circles. The modern view of missions stands in 
strong contrast to the evangelical view. 

Professor Edward Caldwell Moore, of Harvard Uni- 
versity, in an article on The Liberal Movement and Mts- 
sions, points out that “for the missionary achievements 
of the nineteenth century the churches described as or- 
thodox have been almost wholly responsible.” Liberal 
churches, he says further, “have sustained missionary 
endeavor in but slight degree,” and “the liberal element 
within the so-called orthodox churches....has frequent- 
ly excluded itself” from the missionary enterprise. “Hos- 
tility to missions, lack of sympathy with the aims, dis- 
sent from the methods of those eager in this [mission- 
ary] propaganda, have been almost a party badge of the 
so-called liberal Christianity.” The same author, in his 
book on The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, 
shows that rationalists and liberalists were “hostile to 
missions” for the reason that missions stood for the Bib- 
lical doctrine of salvation, just as the liberals were also 
“alienated from the church at home” for the same reason, 


R cits ini liberalism has from the beginning been 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 22. Italics mine. 


170 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


namely because of the fidelity of the church to the Chris- 
tian faith. This testimony is altogether in accordance 
with fact. 

The real cause for this negative, declining attitude 
of liberalism to Christian missions is not far to seek. 
True missionary work is always based on the conviction 
that you have the truth and the truth must be given to 
others. “The real belief in absolute truth,’ says a writ- 
er in The Unpopular Review, “is a missionary state of 
mind, and carries with it the faith that truth is the one 
thing worth having.”* Modern liberalism denies the pos- 


sibility of knowing absolute religious truth. Further- | 


more it considers all questions of religious doctrine and 
truth as secondary. Therefore it has no positive relig- 
ious message. The best in Christianity and the best in 
heathen religions is, according to modern theology, only 
subjectively, or relatively, good. If Christianity be bet- 
ter than some of the non-Christian religions, we are told, 
the difference is only in degree, indeed in some instanc- 
es in but slight degree. The fact is that some of the 
liberals —the Unitarians, for example — frankly confess 
to their own substantial unity with certain heathen re- 
ligions. A Unitarian writer, having called attention to 
the fact that religious liberalists have more in common 
with the Reform, or Liberal Jews than with orthodox 
Christianity, proceeds to say: 

Then we think of other non-Christian religions. Has it not 
been the Unitarian group that has led in the affirmation that 
there are no heathen religions, that there is one Father over all, 
and all true thought and feeling, yes, all dim groping after truth 


and right, is as divine in origin as the word of Hebrew seer or 
Christian leader ?’’4 


Indeed, the Unitarians, as will be presently pointed out, 


2 P. 87. 
8 July-September number, 1918, p. 96. 
« The Christian Register, January 15, 1920, p. 60. 





UNITARIAN MISSION WORK THA 


glory in their co-operation with pagans, such as the 
Brahmo Somaj of India, a Hindu society which is antag- 
onistic to evangelical Christianity, but friendly to Uni- 
tarianism. The Hindu poet Tagore, by the way, who 
is well-known for his enmity to the Christian faith, rep- 
resents the viewpoint of the Brahmo Somaj. 

Professor Francis A. Christie, of the Unitarian the- 
ological seminary at Meadville, Pa., in an article on Uni- 
tarianism, says: | 

What corresponds to the customary foreign mission work 
[in evangelical denominations] exists [among the Unitarians] in 
the relations sought by the Unitarian body with [pagan] circles 
in India and Japan. The typical instance is the friendship and 
co-operation established with the Brahmo Somaj of India. 
Professor Christie adds that students of the said Hindu 
society who resort to Unitarian theological schools in 
America “find an essential agreement in faith.” “The 
Unitarians think of the Brahmo Somaj,” he says further, 
“as their own movement expressing itself in terms of In- 
dian tradition.”® “The bond of union among us all,” 
said another Unitarian professor, referring to Unitari- 
ans in America, “is the fight against the deity of Jesus 
Christ.” Obviously and naturally heathen religionists 
are included in this bond of union. 

It is to the Unitarian’s credit, however, that they do 
not claim their entering into relations with Hindu and 
other heathen bodies, and recognizing them as repre- 
senting “their own movement” — that they do not claim 
this to be mission work, though the writer just quoted 
says, it corresponds to mission work. Some of the lib- 
erals within evangelical churches, on the other hand, ev- 
idently think it the purpose of missions to enter into “re- 
lations” and religious fellowship with non-Christian peo- 
ples. Representatives of religious liberalism in evangel- 
ical denominations are of the opinion that the mission- 


’ The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 566. 


172 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ary should not come to the heathen claiming that Chris- 


tianity is the one true religion, but he should appreciate 


the heathen religions and learn of them,.and in turn have 
the heathen people appreciate Christianity and learn of it. 

It is a noteworthy fact that modernism in general 
admits that it has been influenced by the heathen world. 
Dr. Miller, the founder of the Christian College of Mad- 
ras, wrote: “Remember that the Hindu religion has giv- 
en the world the great truths of the immanence of God 
and the solidarity of mankind.’® Henry T. Hodgkin, 


Secretary of the British Friends’ Foreign Mission Asso- 


ciation, formerly missionary in China, says: 


It is the missionary’s duty to interpret to the West [i. e., to 


Christendom] all that is highest and purest in the East [i.e., in- 


heathendom], seeking to set forth the true humanity, the simple- 
hearted faith and love to be found in all religions and races, so 
that those who have sent the missionary forth may be drawn to 
love and appreciate those to whom he goes. It is the mission- 
ary’s high calling to interpret West to East and East to West 
by sympathy and true understanding.’’? 


The science of Comparative Religion “has flooded the 
world with a new light,” says Dr, William R. Lawrance. 
It has shown that “back of religions [both Christian and 
heathen] is religion, and each [religion of the world] is 
appreciated and the whole [namely universal religion] is 
apprehended through sympathy.’ The. great heathen 
faiths should be studied, sa.s this writer, “not to cata- 
logue their errors but to understand them.” Missionary 
education should teach Christians “to appreciate non- 
Christian peoples and their religious faith, and to ap- 
proach them [on the platform of universal religion] in 
a spirit of helpful comradeship,” instead of undertaking 
to convert them.’ Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the 


6 Randall, Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 317. 

7 The World Tomorrow, June, 1919, p. 161. Italics mine. 
8 The Social Emphasis in Religious Education, p. 97. 

9 The Christian Register, May 22, 1919, p. 12. 





MUTUAL RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION 173 


University of Chicago, says: “Gradually we have come to 
see that it is religiously desirable that the Christianizing 
of non-Christian peoples shall mean the strengthening 
and purification of the best religious and moral traits of 
their native faith, rather than its complete eradication.” 
Dr. John Herman Randall writes: “What an opportuni- 
ty is presented today for religion to realize, at last, its 
true mission in the world and, minimizing all differ- 
ences, begin to magnify those things common to all relis- 
ions.”11_ At the World’s Sunday School Convention, held 
in Tokyo, in 1920, Prince Tokugawa in an address said 
of the convention's message and purpose: “It is not a 
mere Christian propaganda; it is part of that greater 
propaganda of the Religion of Humanity, which makes 
us feel that all the world is akin.” 

The view, held by the representatives of modern the- 
ology, that mission work means the “interpretation” of 
Christianity to the heathen peoples on the one hand, and 
the “interpretation” of the heathen religions to Christen- 
dom, on the other, raises a number of puzzling ques- 
tions. It is readily seen that the supposed task of such 
interpretation could not furnish the essential motive for 
“mission work. This modern way of reciprocal religious 
interpreting implies that heathenism is met on a com- 
mon basis and is recognized as one in essence with mod- 
ernism. Besides, if the liberalistic view of the Christian 
faith is accepted, namely that Christian doctrine is to be 
considered as of only secondary importance, to acquaint 
heathen peoples with it must also be a secondary matter. 
Neither could religious liberalists consistently expect to 
find the doctrines of non-Christian religions to be of a 
more vital character than the doctrines of the Christian 
faith. It follows that interpreting the West to the East 
and the East to the West can not be a matter of primary 


10 The Biblical World, November, 1919, p. 638. Italics mine. 
11 Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 229. 


174 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


religious import. And such interpretation cannot reason- 


ably be named mission work. Be it repeated here for emi- 


phasis that the Unitarians are showing good sense by 
their refusal to speak of their own work as mission work 
when they simply enter into fellowship with representa- 
tives of heathen religions recognizing them as co-work- 
ers in a common cause. 

But the new view of missions includes more than 
mere mutual interpretation of religion. Its burden is 
the social gospel. Instead of working for the salvation 
of individuals by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, it under- 


takes to save society by socialization and reforms of — 


various description. Dean Shailer Mathews, of the Di- 


vinity School, University of Chicago, says on this point: 


We used to regard the foreign missionary as trying to save 
brands from the burning. Now we can see he is also putting out 
the conflagration [making endeavor for individual salvation un- 
necessary]. He is a messenger of good will, an ambassador of 
the higher internationalism of the kingdom of God.12— If Chris- 
tianity can only rescue brands from the burning but has no power 
to put out the fire [then we have] a religion doomed to disappear 
with the advance of ethical liberalism.18— The new social inter- 
est of Protestant Christianity...... wants to save men into heav- 
en by embodying the principles of the kingdom of heaven in the 
state. It is less concerned in rescuing people than in educating 
them to keep them out of danger.14 


Professor Gerald Birney Smith says: 


Today the missionary enterprise is being shifted from a pro- 
gram of rescuing a few souls from eternal disaster to the ideal 
of a long campaign of education and social reconstruction in the 
non-Christian nations. — Increased emphasis is being laid on the 
claims of the social and political future of the non-Christian peo- 
ples on this earth15— The Great Commission was [formeriy] 
regarded as an autocratic [authoritative] command to be obeyed. 


12 The Biblical World, March, 1915, p. 129. 
13 The same, December, 1914, p. 374. 
_ 14 The Constructive Quarterly, March, 1913, p. 108. - Italics 
mine. ; ; / 
15 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 110. 





RELIGION HUMANIZED 175 


Today missions are justified and supported by looking forward 
and seeking to meet the [social] needs of the future. — Humanly 
determined programs are being substituted for dogmatic decrees 
in the work of the churches. This is genuine democracy.16 — 
The missionary enterprise is rapidly being conceived as a demo- 
cratic social program rather than as the rescue of a few individu- 
als from the divine wrath. To reconstruct the social life of a 
people in all its phases is the end of the gospel. Education is 
coming to be a primary means of accomplishing the missionary 
task.—In a word, when the missionary enterprise is seen to be 
.a democratic religious movement, it gives to Christianity a task 
of supreme importance.!7 


This author, who, by the way, is the Professor of Sys- 
tematic Theology—Christian Doctrine—in one of Amer- 
ica’s largest divinity schools, defends the view that 
“a democratic religion [such as modernists desire to rep- 
resent] must exist by human consent rather than by a 
claim of divine rights [or by building on the authority of 
God’s Word].”'® In other words, Christianity is human- 
ized and, on the mission fields as well as elsewhere, is 
identified with social reconstruction — the new democra- 
cy. The effort is no longer to save the individual from 
sin by preaching and teaching the Gospel. It is no long- 
er believed that this is, at the same time, the most effect- 
ive way to improve society. But the aim is to save so- 
ciety through reforms and legislation of various kinds. 
Professor George Albert Coe, of the Union Theological 
Seminary, New York, says on this point: 


The modern foreign missionary movement started out as an 
effort to rescue individuals from sin by preaching. It is now 
transforming itself into co-operation with the socially construct- 
ive forces of the peoples to the end that the level of the whole 
civilization may be raised. Educative processes that form the 
social standards are becoming basal in missionary strategy.19 





16 The Biblical World, July, 1919, p. 423. 

17 The same, November, 1919, p. 638. Italics mine. 
18 The same, July, 1919, p. 422. 

19 Religious Education, October, 1916, p. 381. 


176 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Another writer in Religious Education says: “When 
one faces the matter squarely, the problem of foreign 
missions is the same at heart as that which is before the 
churches at home. We are at the big business of con- 
structing a Christian social order.’’° 

A Unitarian reporter at the annual meeting of the 
Religicus Education Association, of 1919, held in De- 
troit, points out that the new view of missions was de- 
fended in this gathering. He says: “It would surprise 
many of our [Unitarian] household of faith to hear the 
missionary work in our [evangelical] sister churches in- 
terpreted in terms of world friendship, world relation- 
ship and world service. Yet that is exactly the point of 
view taken in the Missionary Education Movement,” as 
set forth by its representatives at this meeting.** A writ- 
er who was formerly connected with a Christian college 
in China says: | 

The church of today is increasingly emphasizing that part 
of its message which has to do with transforming this world into 
the Kingdom of God. Christians are today attacking sin by try- 
ing to abolish poverty, ignorance and disease. Pursuant to this 
conception missionaries are emphasizing in China, education, 
medical work, famine relief, and help for the unfortunate mem- 
bers of society. In all this they meet with a hearty response, for 
the Confucian school that has so dominated Chinese thought 
through the ages directs its energies largely toward making hu- 


man society ideal.—The social message of Christianity is strik- 
tingly in accord with the best of Chinese tradition.?2 


All unbiased students will admit that religious liberalism 
is more nearly akin to Confucianism than to New Testa- 
ment Christianity. | 

Another object included in the modern view of inis- 
sions is stated by Gerald Birney Smith: “One of the su- 
preme tasks of the church [both in the West and East] 


20 Religious Education, April, 1910, p. 91. 
21 The Christian Register, March 27, 1919, p. 10. 
22 The Biblical World, June, 1917, p. 335. Italics mine. 





HEATHEN RELIGIONS LIBERALISTIC 177 


in a democratic age is to make universally accessible the 
historical interpretation of the Bible’** i.e. the liberal- 
istic religious views. In other words, the defenders of 
modernism consider it the church’s business to spread 
modern theology. Nothing is more natural than this. 
You could not expect a liberalistic church to propagate 
the evangelical faith, could you? Now the greatest im- 
pediment in the way of such liberalistic endeavor is old 
fashioned New Testament Christianity. As for heathen- 
ism it decidedly has liberalistic tendencies. It is an un- 
deniable fact, as has been intimated, that the most fun- 
damental doctrine of modern religious liberalism — the 
doctrine of divine immanence — is of heathen origin. 

The essential liberalism of the most prominent hea- 
then religions is evident from the religious eclecticism of 
their adherents. Not only have they, as a rule, a great 
variety of gods from which to select those whose sup- 
posed pretensions appeal to them, but the practice of 
countless numbers of heathen proves that they have no 
difficulty to profess various religious faiths, for example, 
Buddhism and Confucianism, at the same time. Heathen 
people, as a rule, have no objection against accepting the 
Christians’ God as one among many. What they object 
to is the exclusiveness of Christianity. Liberalism revolts 
at the thought that all other gods must be rejected and 
that there is only one way of salvation. Heathenism is 
essentially liberalistic though it does not go to all the 
length of radical modernism which explains away relig- 
ion by reducing it to a psychological formula. 

It may be worth while, in this connection, to inquire 
into the causes for the difficulties which modernists en- 
counter in persuading those of liberalistic views to iden- 
tify themselves with a liberal church. Children who 
have been brought up under liberalistic influences are 


23 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 347. 


178 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


difficult to win for the liberalistic church of their elders. 
The Unitarian church membership recruits itself large- 
ly, in some sections almost wholly, from the ranks of 
evangelical churches, that is to say from those who had 
been won for Christianity through evangelical influenc- 
es but have made shipwreck of faith. The cause for this 
interesting fact is incidentally given by Professor Ed- 
ward Caldwell Moore, as follows “The true course is ap- 
parently to have religion and then to liberalize it. It is 
seemingly futile to have liberalism and then seek to in- 


ject religion into it.”’* In other words: If you desire 


that young people embrace religion, do not preach to 
them liberalism, for if they become liberalistic in thought, 
you will find it difficult to arouse in them a real religious 


interest and to persuade them to unite with a church. 


But after they have become religious, you may liberal- 
ize them and still hope that they will remain religious 
and be willing to take upon themselves the duties of 
membership in a church. 

Professor Douglas C. Macintosh, of Yale University, 
says similarly, liberalism “is much more efficient in con- 
serving the faith of modern-minded men who are al- 
ready Christian” than in leading non-Christians to re- 
gard Christianity as even probably true.”> This is an ac- 
knowledgment of the fact that persons brought up in 
liberalistic circles are admittedly not easy to win for a 
liberal church. Though such young people are liberal- 
ists, they evidently fail to see sufficient reason for the 
existence of the liberalistic church. Also, of the small 
number of students in Unitarian theological seminaries 
only a minority is of Unitarian parentage. Now sirice 


‘it is seemingly futile to have liberalism and then seek 


to iniect religion into it,” it follows that the matter of 
liberalizing those who have embraced evangelical Chris- 








24 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 10. 
25 The same, 1915, p. 306. 


~ 





CONVERSION TO MODERNISM 179 


tianity — having become members of evangelical church- 
es —-is a question of life and death to liberalistic church- 
es. “It is our mission,” said a speaker in a session of 
the American Unitarian Association, ‘‘to instruct, en- 
lighten [i.e., liberalize] and harmonize the churches of 
Christendom.” All this goes far to explain the mission- 
ary practice of modern liberalism. Its efforts are spent. 
in the attempt to win evangelical Christians in the home 
land as well as in the heathen countries for modern- 
ism. The Unitarians furnish a good illustration to the 
point. While they have established “relations” and fel- 
lowship with pagan religionists, they carry on a great 
work to spread modernism in the home land. 

Nowhere, apparently, has the attempt to’ liberalize 
evangelical churches been more successful than in Japan. 
It has been known for some time that the young Chris- 
tian church of Japan has to considerable extent fallen 
prey to the systematic modernizing endeavors made by 
Unitarians and other liberals. The official representa- 
tive of the Unitarians in Japan has recently made the as- 
sertion that Japanese Christians in “orthodox” mission 
churches are now as a class thoroughly liberalized.” “As: 
early as 1890 the magazine The Unitarian was started in 
Japan, and another, the Shiri (Truth) as an organ for 
propagating the higher criticism. This movement shook 
the Japanese Church to its foundations. For at the same 
time a movement took place within the church in the 
same direction, questioning the inspiration of the Bible 
and asking for a revision of the Creed. Some doubted 
various fundamental doctrines. As a result, faith be-: 
came colder from that time onwards among Japanese 
church members.’*? In China and India the modern the- 





“6 The Christian Register, May 2, 1918. Compare the article 
Christienity in Japan, in Religious Digest, 1919, No. 4. 

27 Report of the Edinburgh World "Missionary Conference, 
vol. IV, p. 113. 


180 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ology is working havoc among converts to Christiant- 
ty... The missionary Robert Gillies, of the China Inland 
Mission, reports that in China the destructive criticism 
is making inroads upon the preaching of the missionaries 
and upon the literature published by missionary publish- 
ing houses. This is the consequence of prospective mis- 
sionaries attending unsafe colleges and seminaries in the 
home land. Furthermore many of the Christian missions 
in China send their students to Great Britain and Amer- 
ica to be educated and in many instances their faith in 
the Bible, as taught by faithful missionaries, is under- 


mined. A veteran missionary says: “We pray the Lord 


of the harvest that He will thrust forth laborers into 
the harvest, and then we send those laborers to semi- 
naries where they are unfitted, wholly incapacitated, to 
work in the harvest field.”*® It will probably be remem- 
bered that Evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman gave the ad- 
vice that the churches at home should recall from the 
mission field all missionaries who did not. believe with- 
out reserve in the integrity and authority of the Bible. 

Rev. Charles Inwood, a Bible teacher and evangelist 
who has visited many mission fields of the world, reports 
that, in his opinion, the greatest menace to the efficiency 
of Christian missions is found in the lack of conviction 
as to the inspiration of the Bible as the authoritative 
content of the Christian message. “At home this means 
the shifting of the basis of the missionary motive from 
obedience to the command of Christ to a purely human- 
itarian impulse and purpose. On the mission field it 
means less study of the Bible as the message of final au- 
thority as to the needs of man and God’s way of salva- 
tion, and more study of man and his environment to dis- 
cover his personal desires and human possibilities.” 

At the quadrennial meetings of the Federal Council 


28 The Sunday School Times, June 28, 1919. 
29 The same, December 26, 1920, p. 715. 





—-. 


LIBERALISM ON MISSION FIELDS 181 


of Churches, held in Boston, 1920, Dr. Doremus Scud- 
der, of the Congregational Church, formerly a pastor in 
Japan, after making a plea for the admission of the Uni- 
tarian Church to the Federal Council, complained that 
the evangelical’churches of Japan refused to admit the 
representative of the Unitarian Church, Dr. Clay Mac- 
Cauley, to their fellowship. “Among the [evangelical] 
missionaries in Japan,” he said further, “there were 
young modern-minded and modernly trained mission- 
aries, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and 
others, whose point of view concerning Jesus was prac- 
tically the same as that of this veteran [Dr. MacCau- 
Tey? 

Under the title, Can This Be True? the Moody Bible 
Institvic Monthly for November, 1920, has an article giv- 
ing “cpinions expressed at a missionary conference in 
India recently” 

1. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is like the avatars of the 
Hindus. 2. The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Virgin birth 
are not facts. 3. People make a mistake in speaking of the Bi- 
ble as inspired rather than inspiring. 4, Jesus cannot do all the 
work of redemption in a lifetime. 5. Isaiah fifty-three is not a 
prophecy of Christ. The appearance of its being so is largely due 
to its translation having been made by Christians. 6. We should 
not refuse to think that Jesus made mistakes in what He said. 7. 
The idea of a day of judgment is not believed by any sane person. 


The Sunday School Times says: 


Notwithstanding the steady tendency to unbelief in the car- 
dinal doctrines of the Word on the part of many modern mis- 
sionaries, yet it will be an encouragement to God’s people to 
know that in all these lands the Lord is raising up a native min- 
istry who know, love and preach the clear message of the Gos- 
pel.32 


Professor William Brenton Greene, Jr., of Princeton 


30 The Christian Register, December 9, pay P. 3, 
32 October 23, 1920. 


182 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Theological Seminary, in a timely article on The Crises 
of Christianity, writes: : 

Again, the crisis of Christianity appears in this, that while 
her missionaries are multiplying, their gospel, it would seem, 
here and there, little by little, is being depleted and emasculated. 
Such is the warning that has been coming to us from Japan. 
Such is the warning that is now coming to us from China. Such 
is the warning that is beginning to come to us from other fields. 
Could anything be so appalling? We have been wont to look on 
our Foreign Missions as the demonstration that the church is 
obeying her Lord’s last and great commission to “go into all the 
world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” But what 
if the gospel which some missionaries preach is another gospel 
which is not a gospel? This would prove treason both in the 
council tent and on the firing line.33 

The new view of missions is the most insidious foe 
of evangelical missions. The immediate aim of modern- 
ism is the modernization of Christendom both in the 
home land and in foreign countries — the undoing of the 
work of the faithful missionaries of the cross. The ul- 
timate object of liberalistic mission effort is the sociali- 
zation of the heathen nations through social service, re- 
form and social reconstruction. It is said that social 
service for the nations of the earth is a worthy endeavor. 
This cannot be questioned. But when carried on on a 
liberalistic basis and offered as a substitute for the 
Christian faith social service has necessarily a pronounc- 
ed anti-Christian tendency. Furthermore, the attempt 
to socialize the non-Christian countries has nothing to 
recommend it to thinking people so long as the endeay- 
ors for the socialization of the home lands have failed. 
Here the proverb is applicable, “Physician, heal thyself.” 

The representatives of the new view of missions have 
done very little along any line for the heathen nations. 
They have a way, however, of diverting evangelical mis- 
sion effort into liberalistic channels. Liberalism, by the 


33 The Princeton Theological Review, 1919, p. 346. 





MISSION FUNDS FOR LIBERALISTIC USES 183 


confession of some of its own adherents, lacks the true 
missionary motive. Has it ever been heard of, that peo- 
ple are tithing themselves in order to spread the modern 
religious liberalism among ‘heathen nations? We think 
not. But there are many, many loyal Christian believ- 
ers who tithe themselves to assist in bringing the pre- 
cious Gospel of salvation to those who grope in heathen 
darkness. They have the missionary spirit for the rea- 
son that they are convinced to have in the Christian faith 
- the most valuable treasure. They realize that the great- 
est service to be rendered to others is to spread the faith 
through which they have found salvation. There are 
those who give tithes of their income though they them- 
selves are doing without some things that are generally 
supposed to be needful. Some do not have the means to 
educate their own children properly. They make sacri- 
fices out of love to their Lord, to bring to the heathen 
this priceless treasure. Now for religious liberalists to 
use such money for liberalistic purposes in accordance 
with the new view of missions, is by all odds the greatest 
offence of which modernism is guilty. That such condi- 
tions are possible is also a serious blot on the good name 
-of the Christian Church. It is only fair to say that lib- 
eralism should not undertake the liberalization and so- 
cialization of the world if its own constituency is unwill- 
ing to support this work by furnishing the needed means. 


XVII 


MODERN RELIGIOUS UNIONISM 


has recently been stated by John R. Mott: “It is 
more necessary to be active than to be orthodox.” 
In other words, to work is the great necessity; whether 
vou work for evangelical Christianity, or religious liber- 


Ts leadng principle of modern religious unionism 


alism, is a secondary matter. The slogan of modern un- 


ionism is, “Getting together by working together.” Says 
Dean Shailer Mathews: 

Yet whatever form co-operative denominationalism may 
take, we are learning daily one lesson of democracy: the way to 
get together is to work together. It is futile to try to standard- 
ize theologies in a democratic world. It is even more futile to 
try to find some theological minimum [a minimum creed] which 
will be unobjectionable to everybody [as a basis for a working 
union ].1 

This is a correct and authoritative statement of the 
modern principle of religious unionism. It demands 
working together with those to whom even a theological 
minimum, or a declaration favoring at least a few of the 
Christian fundamentals, is objectionable. Now it can- 
not be questioned for a moment that there are certain 
kinds of work in which evangelical Christians and repre- 
sentatives of liberalism can unitedly engage. If former 
President Taft, who is a Unitarian, were your neighbor, 
could you not consistently agree to co-operate in making 
a needed sanitary improvement, or undertaking to per- 
suade a property-holder not to rent his building for im- 
moral purposes? Most assuredly so. But, assuming 
that you are a believer in the deity of Christ and in salva- 





1 The Independent (New York), April 17, 1920. 





‘ 
a ll ett i i ee i ee i 


: 
: 
: 


DOCTRINAL INDIFFERENCE 185 


tion through the Blood, you could not, without becom- 
ing disloyal to the fundamentals of the faith, engage in 
evangelistic or other distinctly Christian work with Uni- 
tarians. If you, for example, consented to the engage- 
ment of a minister, or evangelist, that is acceptable to 
liberals, you would plainly show that you are not taking 
your supposed evangelical faith seriously. Even if the 
liberalists — desiring you to take a stand in favor of 
unionism — agreed to leave the choice of a Christian 
_worker to you, the fact that you are willing to work with 
them in such a way would create the impression that 
you do not regard the differences between your position 
and that of the liberalists as of fundamental importance. 
Therefore the very fact that you consented to such union 
endeavors would be an aid to the liberal cause. Liberal- 
ism, having no essential doctrines, has nothing to lose 
but can only gain through the modern unionism. 

Back of such unionism lies the supposition that the 
differences between evangelical Christianity and liberal 
religion are of small consequence and should be obliter- 
ated. A union is to be effected by making conservatives 
forget and ignore the differences that separate them 
from modernists. To this end the slogan “Getting to- 
gether by working together” has been adopted. Here 
the words of the Prophet Amos are applicable: “How 
can two walk together except they be agreed?” How can 
they who accept the Gospel as the apostles preached it, 
and they who uphold a modern substitute for the Gospel, 
work together in the evangelization of the world? How 
can the liberals who recognize Buddhists as brethren in 
the faith and undertake the conversion of believing 
Christians to modernism, engage in religious work with 
evangelical Christians? How can believers in Christ 
recognize as co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord those 
who speak of the doctrine of salvation through the Blood 
as “pestilential teaching?” Is it not a surprising evidence 


186 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


of the shallowness of new theology thought that evan- 
gelicals are either supposed to virtually abandon their 
position, or that it is assumed the two parties which have 
opposite views concerning the meaning of salvation can 
labor together for the salvation of men? 


In the month of August, 1918, a Conference of The- 
ological Schools was held in Cambridge, Mass., at the 
invitation of Harvard University. The last day of the 
conference was begun with a communion service in 
which, besides representatives of evangelical churches, 
Unitarians also participated. The editor of an evangel- 
ical church organ, commenting on this “demonstration 
of Christian unity,” says, the nature of the Christian re- 
ligion, if rightly comprehended, is such that “it does not 
nullify fellowship” and the Christian faith is never di- 
visive but all-comprehensive. Dr. John Herman Ran- 
dall writes: “The most hopeful sign today is the new 
movement toward Christian unity. — Such unity is not 
the end but only the stepping stone to a still broader re- 
ligious unity that shall embrace all mankind.’* This au- 
thor says further: “What an opportunity is presented 
today for religion to realize, at last, its true mission in 
the world and, minimizing all differences, begin to mag- 
nify those things common to all religions.’”* Another 
liberalistic writer says: “The new interpretation of re- 
ligion demands that men of all religions forget the things 
that have divided them in the past, and that stress be 
placed upon the establishment of a genuine social jus- 
tice.” Professor Roy Wood Sellars has the following to 
say on the question of religious unionism: “The belief 
in God must not be a creedal element and atheism must 
cease to be a term of reproach. The question of the ex- 
istence of God should not affect the fellowship of mem- 


2 Humanity at the Cross Roads, p. 224. 
3 The same, p. 229. 





“BELIEF IN GOD INESSENTIAL” 187 


bers in a church. If emphasis is swung to the human- 
istic side, the question of God’s existence will naturally 
drop into the list of maybe’s.’’* 

The modern religious liberalism is, it must be con- 
ceded, all-comprehensive in design. But modern relig- 
ion would, clearly, not claim to be all-comprehensive, if 
it did not deny the existence of Satan and of his king- 
dom. The new theology disowns the Word of God and 
therefore denies that the prince of this world “now work- 
“eth in the children of disobedience” (Eph, 2:2). True, if 
Scripture teaching is unacceptable, if there is no king- 
dom of evil and sin is not what Scripture says it is, then 
the attitude of liberalism on this point may be correct. 
On the other hand, if there is a prince of darkness and a 
kingdom of evil, it is obvious that an all-comprehensive 
religion would necessarily include them. That liberal- 
istic religion would be only uniting in its character and 
effect, and not also separating, is therefore its fatal 
weakness. 

Concerning the “Federal Council of the Churches of 
Christ in America” Professor Geo. Cross says: “Doctrin- 
al discussions are carefully avoided because, no doubt, 
of the danger of a growth of divisive influences. Never- 
theless the doctrinal implications of its position must be 
squarely faced sooner or later.”®> Dr. Charles S. Macfar- 
land, the General Secretary of the Federal Council, 
writes: “I am willing to talk with men upon almost any 
other subject but that of Christian unity. The important 
thing is to get them together to show them the common 
social task.”® Proceeding on this principle, the con- 
stituent bodies of the Federal Council have united on a 
social creed instead of a religious one. We may, of 
course, be told that social service is the fruit of Chris- 


4 The Christian Register, July 29, 1920, p. 7. 
5 The American Journal of Theology, January, 1919, p. 143. 
6 Christian Service and the Modern World, p. 110. 


188 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


tianity. The fact, however, is that the social creed of 
the Federal Council is not distinctively Christian in char- 
acter. Any normal man, be he Christian, Jew, Moham- 
medan, or heathen, will admit that the reforms demand- 
ed in the said “creed” are desirable. The social creed of 
the Federal Council would make a praiseworthy plat- 
form for a political party; it is quite inadequate as a 
creed or working scheme for a federation of churches. 
Premier Lloyd George, of England, has lately said wise 


words on this question: 

The task of the churches is greater than that which comes 

within the compass of any political party. Political parties may 
provide the lamps, lay the wires, turn the current on to certain 
machinery, but the churches must be the power stations. If the 
generating stations are destroyed, whatever the arrangements 
and plans of the political parties may be, it will not be long be- 
fore the light is cut off from the homes of the people. The doc- 
trines taught by the churches are the only security against the 
triumph of human selfishness, and human selfishness unchecked 
will destroy any plans, however perfect, that politicians may de- 
vise. 
In other words, the churches, by faithfully propagating 
Christian truth, are rendering the greatest possible serv- 
ice to the nation. Professor George R. Dodson has well 
said: 

The social interests are a very important part of life, and re- 
ligious people today usually try to promote them. But they nei- 
ther are nor can be the basis of a church. How to make the 
world a decent place to live in is not one problem but many, and 
they cannot be solved together. If men had no other interests, 
they would not form a church but would create special organiza- 
tions to produce special results, e. g. associations for tax reforms, 
city planning, better housing, smoke abatement, pure milk, in- 
dustrial conciliation, suppression of vice, the mastery of tubercu- 
losis and social diseases, etc. Even if the church undertook these 
tasks, it would fail, and its minister could be nothing more than 
a superficial sociologist, knowing many things but knowing none 
of them well, and doing many things but all of them badly. — 
To give religious names to organizations formed her secular ends 
conduces neither to clearness of thought nor to any other good.7 





SOCIAL INTERESTS AS BASIS 189 


It is quite possible that a church or a federation of 
churches may stand for positive religious truth without 
adopting a written creed; they may have a creed though 
it be unwritten. Among the constituents of the Federal 
Council there are those who would not accept a minimum 
creed expressing adherence to the fundamentals of the 
Christian faith. It is a significant fact that the Unitari- 
ans and other liberals earnestly desire admittance into 
the Council, on the ground that some of the most rad- 
ical liberals are within this body. A federation standing 
loyally to the fundamentals would not attract the Uni- 
tarians. The fact remains that unless a federation of re- 
ligious bodies stands for the fundamentals of the Chris- 
tian faith and will write them on its banners, it does not 
sustain a distinctly Christian character. That it may 
have a social or political creed does not change this fact 
in the least. 


It should be added that the social service wave which 
struck the modern church not many years ago has large- 
ly receded. “Social service has been a blessing,” says 
Willard L. Sperry, a representative of liberalism, “but 
its sources of energy are not as strong as they were; the 
coal may be getting low. We are liable to develop a 
cult of busybodies. After all, when those in need are 
housed and clothed, they still must know what to do 
with life.”® And President Arthur Cushman McGiffert 
has said: “We are plagued in these last days by social 
service.’”® 


In short, modern religious unionism stands for ignor- 
ing every fundamental of the Christian faith. This prin- 
ciple was well characterized by Dr, Paul S. Leinbach, an 


7 The Christian Register, October 24, 1918, p. 11. 

8 The same, July 28, 1920, p. 8. 

8 The same, August 22, 1918, p. 9. Compare p. 137 of the 
present book. 


190 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


editor of an evangelical denomination, who, referring to 
a work of charity in which he was engaged with repre- 
sentatives of various denominations, including Unitari- 
ans, said in a Unitarian convention: The men who un- 
dertook this work “forgot the little theological tags 
which divided them and were united in the spirit of serv- 
ice.” The same speaker said “there are in the church 
too many divisive dogmas which keep apart the friends 
of truth.and high ideals.’ While it is true that the Uni- 
tarians, including those among them who stand for out- 
spoken, bald atheism, claim to labor for high ideals, the 
fact remains that Christianity and the full-fledged liber- 
alism are, religiously considered, opposites. The modern 
religious unionism means, in principle, the renunciation 
of the Christian faith, 


Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote: 


I have taken a deep interest in the struggles of the ounnaae 
brethren; but I have never advised those struggles, nor enter- 
tained the slightest hope of their success. My course has been 
of another kind. ‘As soon as I saw, or thought I saw, that error 
had become firmly established, I did not deliberate, but quitted 
the body at once. Since then my one counsel has been, “Come 
ye out from among them.” I have felt that no protest could be 
equal to that of distinct separation. 


10 The Christian Register, June 10, 1920. 





XVIII 


Pow GHD ISCIPLINE, VERSUS PERSECUTION 


ITHIN recent years a number of books and mag- 
W azine articles have been published defending the 
. view that the Christian church has not the moral 
right to exercise discipline for false doctrine. Modern 
thought in general takes the position that all disciplinary 
measures on the part of a church, to exclude heresy and 
maintain the purity of the faith, are an infringement of 
the principle of religious freedom and liberty of con- 
science. Discipline on account of false doctrine is held 
to be persecution, differing only in degree from the dun- 
geon, the rack and the stake. A host of modern writers 
have asserted that a church that will not bear with mod- 
ernism in her midst manifests the spirit of persecution 
that formerly lighted the stake for those who dared to 
dissent from the creed established by the state. 


Not a few liberalistic writers on this subject describe 
the Christian church as the enemy of religious freedom. 
Some seem to be of the opinion that there would never 
- have been religious persecution, had not the church been 
intolerant. It is proper, therefore, to raise the question, 
how it came about that the church whose head is the 
pope, girded herself with the sword to overcome the dis- 
senters and to maintain her creed by incarceration and 
persecution; and whether there is any ground for the 
opinion that the teachings of the Christian church, as 
laid down in the Scriptures, would countenance that sort 
of thing, | 

In the first place it is to be noticed that the Christian 
church endured severe oppression and at times cruel 


192 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


persecution for nearly three hundred years, namely un- 
til the time of Emperor Constantine the Great. This 
emperor embraced the Christian religion and eventually 
decided to make Christianity the religion of the state. 
His sons, who succeeded him, began to persecute the dis- 
senters, namely the heathen who desired to adhere to the 
religion of their fathers, and the Christians who pro- 
tested against state-churchism. For this new departure 
there was absolutely no Scriptural ground, no more than 
for the practice of prayer to the holy virgin, or for the 
doctrine of salvation by works, or for the various other 
unscriptural doctrines and practices that were gradu- 
ally introduced in the established church, There was in 
this period a radical change which amounted, practically, 
to a partial repudiation of Scripture authority. The lead- 
ing church became paganized to a large extent. The de- 
generated state church represented a strange amalgama- 
tion of paganism with Christianity. Originally the 
church, having the mind of Christ and following God’s 
Word alone, had kept itself in consistency with Chris- 
tian principles; the church of Christ had manifested the 
nature of a lamb. Now the lamb lost, as it were, its in- 
nate characteristics; it developed the teeth and claws of 
a beast of prey. 

But there were, as already intimated, Christian dis- 
senters who endured persecution rather than to identify 
themselves with the new state church. In certain per- 
iods the protesting dissenters were comparatively strong. 


Then came the great Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 


tury. The leading reformers believed a union of church 
and state to be unscriptural, but yet they finally consent- 
ed to it—a glaring inconsistency. Even in New Eng- 
land, Protestant churches were established that were in 
efiect state churches, persecuting those who differed 
from the established creed. Today Protestantism is 
practically a unit in the advocacy of religious freedom. 





PERSECUTION UNCHRISTIAN 193 


The denial of freedom of conscience is contrary to 
the principies, precepts, and spirit of New Testament 
Christianity. The New Testament Scriptures clearly 
forbid persecution in any form, but expressly demand 
church discipline for those who err in doctrine or prac- 
tice. Our Lord has ordained that if a man “hear not the 
church,” he should be excluded (Matt. 18:17). And Paul 
says: “A man that is an heretic after the first and second 
admonition reject” (Tit. 3:10). Again Christ has com- 
manded His followers to “resist not evil’ (Matt. 5:39) 
namely, as the context indicates, not with the sword of 
iron. In the parable of the tares among the wheat, 
where the field represents the world — not the church — 
as is expressly stated (verse 38), the servants are bidden 
to “let both grow together until the harvest....lest while 
ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with 
them.’ (Matt. 13:29, 30). This is clearly a warning a- 
gainst the attempt to bring about a regeneration of so- 
ciety cr of the world by the use of force; it is a warning 
against persecution. 

Modernism defends the opinion that the principle of 
religious freedom and liberty of conscience does not per- 
mit of church discipline on account of false teaching. 
Obviously this view is an indication of the shallowness 
and superficiality of the modern mind. In effect the 
- modern position means that ithe dismissal of a liberalist- 
ic minister, or professor in a church institution, is con- 
trary to the principle of liberty of conscience. The mod- 
ern view of religious freedom is the very opposite of the 
view defended by the early champions of freedom. The 
early defenders of religious liberty held that liberty of 
conscience means that no one should be compelled to 
make a profession of faith or to unite with a church. 
And if a member or minister of a church decided to 
withdraw, he should have the right to do so. The mod- 
ern view that the principle of religious freedom gives 


194 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


an unorthodox religious teacher the right to fill a posi- 
tion in an orthodox church would have appeared stupid 
to the early defenders of freedom. They were not under 
the spell of modern thought and hence must have real- 
ized that a truly orthodox church is necessarily bur- 
dened in conscience to entrust the important office of a 
preacher or teacher to a religious liberalist. An ortho- 
dox church cannot with a good conscience tolerate that 
sort of thing. Therefore the principle of liberty of con- 
science must give a religious body the right to ask for 
the withdrawal of those who do not accept its doctrines 
and principles, just as it gives the individual the right 
to withdraw of his own free will. 


Modernism, it is worthy of notice, seems to have de- 
veloped a type of conscience that differs radically from 
the Christian conscience of the old heroes of the faith. 
In our day liberalistic theologians who have discarded 
the Bible faith think, as a rule, that to ask them to re- 
sign their office in an orthodox church is to oppress 
their conscience and to persecute them. When a num- 
ber of years ago a minister in a prominent denomination 
offended his church by his new theology. views, the 
opinion was publicly expressed that to ask him to resign 
his paying position would be a mild form of persecu- 
tion, since he could probably not earn as much in an- 
other profession. On the other hand the mighty men 
of faith who defended the principle of religious free- 
dom did not find it in their conscience to remain in a 
church from which they differed in faith; they with- 


drew, though to do so may have meant for them the | 


> 


most cruel persecution. 


It is refreshing to notice that there are a few repre- 
sentatives of modern liberalism who do not accept the 


opinion that the principle of liberty of conscience gives 


a liberalistic minister the right to retain his position in 








~~ aia , = 
ee ae SL ee ee ee. 


MODERNIST IDEA OF FREEDOM 195 


an orthodox church. The minister of the First Uni- 
tarian Church in Cambridge, Mass., says: 

I see no reason for complaints [because of the exclusion of 
liberalists from evangelical churches]. An organization for the 
promulgation of doctrines in which I do not believe is one to 
which I do not wish to belong. If the organization should give 
me to understand that the assent to its creed which it asks of me 
is only nominal, this confession of unreality would only deepen 
my determination not to belong to it.1 

Without doubt this writer recognizes the fact that 
Unitarians do not for a moment suppose that it would 
be inconsisent with the principle of religious liberty to 
ask the resignation of an orthodox minister or professor 
in the Unitarian Church. If a secret order may con- 
sistently expel a member who fails to stand for its prin- 
ciples, why should it be inconsistent for the church to 
take similar action? 

The modern view of religious freedom is, in its final 
essence, merely camouflaged doctrinal indifference. The 
liberalistic mind has largely accepted the opinion that 
there is no absolute religious truth, that doctrine is 
quite a secondary matter, and that it should therefore 
not matter to an evangelical church if a liberalistic person 
is holding office. The thought, however, that the prin- 
ciple of religious freedom requires such an attitude of 
indifference cannot be taken seriously, no more than the 
modern idea that the early Protestant leaders who con- 
demned religious oppression and persecution, did so 
from motives of indifference to doctrine. This view re- 
garding the early Protestants is in fact an historical un- 
truth that is a reflection on the intelligence of those who 
accept it. If the reformers had not believed that Chris- 
tian doctrine is of the greatest importance, might they 
not have remained in the state church in which they 
were born and held office? Was it not possible for them 


1 The Arbitrator, January, 1919, p. 12. 


196 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


in that church to lead a devoted life and even to deviate 
from the established creed, provided they did not publish 
or profess their convictions? Would they, or their fol- 
lowers, have suffered persecution and death for the sake 
of doctrine, if they had the modern views of indifference 
as to Christian doctrine? Has it ever been heard of that 
a liberalist, who is neutral or indifferent in the matter 
of faith and doctrine, endured persecution for his relig- 
ious faith? Wi5ull a man die for his faith when his relig- 
ion consists principally of negations and when he ac- 
cepts the opinion that there is no absolute religious truth 
and that theology is nothing beyond method? Is it not 
incredible that religious liberalism will make martyrs? 

Modern liberalism boasts of the advocacy of relig- 
ious freedom. We are told that modernism has never 
oppressed or persecuted those who are of different per- 
suasion. There is abundant evidence that this claim is 
not well taken. The countries whose governments have 
fallen prey to religious liberalism have suffered a cur- 
tailment of religious freedom. The government of 
France, for example, is so thoroughly modernist as to 
be anti-religious. Today a church or religious society 
has less legal right in France than any secular society 
or corporation; religious societies have been deprived of 
the right to own real estate property. Says the late 
Professor G. Santayana, of Harvard University: 

Liberalism has been supposed to advocate liberty, but what 
the advanced parties that still call themselves liberal now advo- 
cate is control, control over property, trade, wages, hours of 
work, meat and drink, amusements, and in a truly advanced 
country like France control over education and religion; and it 
is only on the subject of marriage (if we ignore eugenics) that 
liberalism is growing more and more liberal. 

Professor Santayana is right. In France the liberal- 
istic government has to some extent succeeded in gain- 


2 Winds of Doctrine, p. 4. 





MODERNISM INTOLERANT 197 


ing control of religion. As liberalism is increasing in 
other countries it is working toward the same end. 
More and more voices are heard that favor a union of 
liberalized religion with the state. This will mean per- 
secution for the dissenters, as may be further shown 
elsewhere. 


XIX 


HISTORICAL FALSEHOODS — CONTRASTS BE- 
TWEEN FREEDOM AND ANARCHY 


HEN George Burman Foster, because of his ad- 
W vocacy of modern liberalism, was excluded from 

the Chicago Association of Baptist Ministers, 
he advanced the claim that he was “the most truly Bap-. 
tist of them all.”1 A writer in a Unitarian periodical 
thinks, the Unitarians, since they do not require any. 
doctrinal tests whatever, are “the real successors of 
Roger Williams,” the founder of the Baptist Church in 
America. The same writer thinks, the Unitarians “are 
perhaps the only people who are Baptists in Roger Wil- 
liams’ estimate.”* The editor of a Unitarian journal is 
of the opinion that “thorough adherence to the funda- 
mental Baptist position” assures “sympathy with liberal 
theology.’”* The view has often been expressed that the 
true Protestant position demands the toleration of re- 
ligious liberalism in an evangelical church. A Baptist 
writer Says: 

Has the Baptist denomination with its splendid tradition of 
religious liberty not room for those who exercise their liberty in 
adopting....modern interpretations of the old gospel? Surely it 
cannot be that the denominational heirs of Roger Williams in- 
tend to drive out those who are Roger ‘Williams’ spiritual heirs.4 

In a similar way it is often asserted that the true 
Congregationalists, the true Lutherans, etc., are the rep- 
resentatives of the new theology. We have singled out 


1 The Christian Register, March 6, 1919, p. 7. 
2 The same, May 2, 1918, p. 7. 

3 The same, May 2, 1918. 

4 Quoted in Word and Way, 1911, No. 4, 





A HISTORICAL PERVERSION 199 


the Baptists for an example, since liberal tendencies are 
most frequently ascribed to them. Similar assertions 
are also made concerning other denominations and a- 
bout Protestantism in general. Professor Geo. Cross, 
of Rochester Theological Seminary, for example, iden- 
tifying Protestantism with liberalism, says: “Protestant- 
ism denies that the natural and the supernatural are 
separate. It finds the supernatural within the natural 
and the divine within the human.’® Auguste Sabatier, 
the well-known liberal French theological leader, wrote: 
“With Luther and Calvin the Christian conscience 
was definitely recognized as autonomous. It can never 
again retrace its steps nor again take on the yoke. The 
idea of setting up in Protestantism an external infalli- 
ble authority [recognizing the Scriptures as God’s in- 
errant Word] is only a survival of the principle which 
was defeated in the sixteenth century.’® Similar views 
regarding Luther and Calvin have often been expressed 
by liberalistic writers. 

But on what ground are such assertions made? Ev- 
ery student of church history ought to know that the 
leading reformers of the sixteenth century advocated the 
principle that Scripture, not conscience, is the final au- 
thority, and that a conscience that is not tuned to Scrip- 
ture teaching is an erring conscience. The idea that 
conscience is autonomous,—a law unto itself — that 
it is not to be subject to God’s Word — this idea would 
have been a very abomination to the reformers. To ig- 
nore this outstanding fact regarding their position and 
assert the contrary is inexcusable. There is abso- 
lutely no evidence for such a view. It is just one among 
the many perversions of history which liberalism ac- 
cepts dogmatically on the authority of some liberalistic 
writers. 


5 The American Journal of Theology, April, 1919, p. 140. 
© Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirst, p. 252. 


200 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


It is important to remember that our question is not 
whether there are in our day churches of the Lutheran, 
Presbyterian, Baptist, etc., denominations which are lib- 
eralistic in doctrine. It is only too well known that this 
is the case. The point in question is, was there origin- 
ally in the doctrines and principles of these churches any 
ground for the claim that they cannot consistently be 
identified with the old theology to the exclusion of liber- 
alism. Are these churches, in so far as they refuse to 
countenance the new theology, true Congregational, 
Disciple, etc., churches, or have they fallen from their 
first estate? Is there, historically considered, any ground 
for the opinion that true evangelical Christians take a 
liberalistic view of the nature of Christian doctrine and 
can therefore not have any doctrinal tests or, in other 
words, that liberalism is an innate characteristic of 
Protestantism? ? : 

Concerning no other evangelical church, probably, 
has the claim of innate liberalism been so frequently re- 
peated and so largely accepted as about the Baptists. 
It is for this reason that we take them here for an ex- 
ample. Many writers, both within and without the Bap- 
tist Church, have said that Baptists have no binding 
creed; they do not stand for anything doctrinally ; they 
have a right to reject any doctrine, every Baptist Church 
is a law unto itself in matters of faith and practice. If 
this were a correct statement of fact there could be no 
question but that Baptists are essentially liberalistic in 
faith. 

But there are Baptist churches— great numbers of 
them — which take the position that to deny the Chris- 
tian fundamentals is to repudiate the Baptist faith. In 
other words, there are Baptists who have a creed, be it 
written or unwritten, that is held to be binding. This 
fact has been overlooked by those who have asserted 
that “heresy trials” are made impossible by the supposed 





STATE CHURCHISM UNSCRIPTURAL 201 


Baptist position as to creed. Though there are liberal- 
istic Baptist churches which do not hold to anything 
doctrinally, the supposition that they constitute the 
whole of the Baptist denomination can find acceptance 
only with them that are unacquainted with the outstanding 
facts. 

A thorough search of early Congregational and Bap- 
tist literature, including their confessions, establishes 
the fact beyond the possibility of a doubt that there is 
“no room whatever for the view that they were liberal- 
istically inclined, or had no doctrinal tests. It is diffi- 
cult to see that a church could be more free from theo- 
logical liberalism than were the early evangelical dis- 
senters. The British state church of a few centuries 
ago would not have admitted that it was theologically 
liberalistic in any respect. Considered from the view 
point of these dissenters, however, the union of church 
and state which, contrary to Scripture, was upheld by 
the state church, was in effect liberalistic. It meant 
that the Scriptures are not the only authority in matters 
religious. The Mennonites, Baptists and other dissent- 
ers saw clearly ——and every evangelical Christian will 
agree with them today—that there is absolutely no 
Scripture warrant for a union of a Christian church with 
the state. They realized that a church which consents 
to a union with the state, does not follow the voice of 
Scripure but of self-interest on the part of kings and 
potentates and ecclesiastical leaders. The scriptural 
way to plant and maintain the faith and to kindle the 
love of God in the hearts of men is quite different from 
the way of state-churchism. State-churchism is not 
founded on Scripture, hence its acceptance means the 
rejecticn of the principle of the sole authority of Scrip- 
ture; and therefore it, in principle, means to that extent 
theological liberalism. The leading principle of liber- 
alism is the setting aside of Scripture as the authority 


202 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


for the faith and practice of the church and considering 
doctrinal matters of secondary importance, 

The fact that the early Baptists published a number 
of confessions at various times has been supposed to in- 
dicate that they had no binding creed, since former con- 
fessions were superseded by newer ones. But a com- 
parison of these confessions shows that they are state- 
ments of one and the same creed. Need it be said that 
neither the Baptists nor any other body of reasonable 
Christian confessors were ever of the opinion that a 
written statement which they might give of their faith 
was beyond the possibility of improvement? The Bap- 
tists stood for definite doctrines and principles and 
those who did not accept their creed were refused the 
right of membership, in other words, they had an au- 
thoritative creed like all other evangelical denomina- 
tions. One of their articles of faith was the inspiration 
of the Scriptures. .They recognized the Scriptures as in- 
fallible, verbally inspired; they said of the Bible that 
“God is the author thereof (in the sense that He inspired 
it), therefore it is to be receivel because it is the Word 
of God,” as is stated in the Baptist Confession of 1677. 
Now the acceptance of the inspiration of Scripture is in 
itself a creed of tremendous importance. It would be 
folly to say that a church which accepts the supernat- 
ural divine revelation in Scripture has no binding creed 
or is “a law unto itself” in doctrinal questions. When 
consistently accepted the doctrine of inspiration excludes 
theological liberalism. 

Again the opinion has often been expressed that 
Baptists, since they have always advocated liberty of 
conscience, should within their churches grant all lib- 
erty to deviate in doctrinal matters from the accepted 
standards. Only recently, when a Unitarian minister 
occupied the pulpit of a Baptist church in a New Eng- 
land city, the local Baptist Ministers’ Association, though 








WHAT IS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM? 203 


affirming their own orthodoxy, declared themselves in 
favor of granting such liberties. Their decision on this 
question they expressed in the following statement: 

Resolved that we believe in freedom of thought and religious 

practices. For centuries Baptists have been passionate advo- 
cates of religious democracy in its purest forms. While we cher- 
ish our own personal convictions unflinchingly, we concede to 
those who differ from us the ancient Baptist privilege of private 
judgment and free speech [even in our churches]. As Baptists 
we believe in religious freedom. 
So they supposed themselves justified to open their pul- 
pits to Unitarian preachers. “To Unitarians this is pe- 
culiarly gratifying,’ says a Unitarian editor, “for our 
central principle is that same unfaltering faith in the 
right of private judgment and spiritual freedom.’” 

The reader will notice that the Ministers’ Association 
which gave out this declaration failed to make clear the 
point, what religious freedom, or liberty of conscience, 
has to do with the question of admitting Unitarian min- 
isters to evangelical pulpits. A number of questions are 
here pertinent. In the first place it should be noticed 
that the said Baptist ministers assert their own ortho- 
doxy. Could it be, then, that they are of the opinion 
that, by refusing Baptist pulpits to Unitarian ministers, 
the evangelical] Baptists would forego the privileges of 
religious freedom and liberty of conscience? Could not 
these privileges be exercised without permitting those 
who deny the deity of our Lord to speak in evangelical 
churches? Or could it be that the Unitarian ministers 
do not enjoy religious freedom unless they are admitted 
to evangelical pulpits? Since the Constitution of the 
United States of America guarantees religious freedom 
to every man, Unitarians and freethinkers not excluded, 
are the evangelical churches violating the Constitution 
of our land when they deny them their pulpits? We 


7 The Christian Register, May 2, 1918. 


204 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


know, by way of illustration, of a person— not a Uni- 
tarian — who claimed the right to preach in all church- 
es of a certain town; his claim was not based on the 
principle of religious freedom, however, but on a sup- 
posed special call. Could it be that the Unitarian min- 
isters’ conscience is so constituted that it cannot exer- 
cise its God-given liberty, if they are refused the priv- 
ilege to occupy evangelical pulpits? 


And what about Unitarians permitting orchedaes 
evangelical preachers to occupy any of their pulpits? 
Will they permit faithful messengers of the old gospel 
to preach in their churches? Do they believe that re- 
ligicus freedom demands this sort of thing of them? 
Certainly not. This is what John Haynes Holmes has 
to say on this point: “Even those radical churches which 
have freed themselves of all theological bonds have 
gone to the other extreme of setting up a structure of 
denial which is just as exclusive as any of the creeds of 
Christendom.”* Dr. Holmes is right. In fact, Unitari- 


ans are more positive in their denials than some nom- 


inally evangelical churches are in their affirmations. 
There is plenty of evidence of a deep-seated aversion on 
the part of Unitarians against orthodox preaching, but — 
they obviously agree with liberalistic Baptists in the 
opinion that the exercise of religious freedom involves 
the admission of Unitarians to evangelical puipits. 

The question remairs, what has the refusal to admit 
Unitarian ministers to evangelical pulpits to do with re- 
ligious freedom and with Roger Williams’ position on 
this point? In what respect is it a violation of this prin- — 
ciple? Some of the eminent theologians tell us there is 
such a violation involved but they have utterly failed 


to make this point clear. How is it to be explained, we — 


may further ask, that people who boast of being in the 3 


8 Unity, May 22, 1919, p. 140. 





WESLEY ON LIBERALISTIC VIEWS 205 


habit of doing their own thinking, as liberals often do, 
accept the opinion that a church which takes a definite 
stand doctrinally is violating the principle of religious 
freedom? 

We have, by way of illustration, spoken here more 
particularly of the Baptists, but all other evangelical 
churches originally occupied essentially the same ground 
as the Baptists, on such fundamental doctrines as the 
trinity of God, the deity of Christ, the Atonement, the 
inspiration of the Scriptures, etc., and as regards the 
proper attitude toward those who disown these truths. 
The early Methodists, for example, considered these 
doctrines as essential, in other words, they had a bind- 
ing creed including these points of doctrine. This is 
evident from various statements made by John Wesley. 
He wrote, for instance, to a prominent Unitarian: 

Take away the scriptural doctrine of redemption, or justifi- 
cation, and that of the new birth, the beginning of sanctification, 
or, which amounts to the same thing, explain them as you do, 
suitaply to your doctrine of original sin; and what is Christian- 
ity better than heathenism? Wherein (save in rectifying some 
of your notions) has the religion of St. Paul any pre-eminence 
over that of Socrates or Epictetus? Either I or you mistake the 
whole of Christianity from the beginning to the end. Either my 
scheme or yours is as contrary to the scriptural as the Koran is. 
Is it mine or yours? Yours has gone through all England, and 
made numerous converts. I attack it from end to end; let all 
England judge whether it can be defended or not.9 


The right of a body of Christian believers to stand 
for certain doctrinal convictions, and consequently to 
uphold a doctrinal norm for those who would identify 
themselves with them, or would speak in their churches, 
cannot be questioned. It is impossible to take seriously 
the opinion that the principle of religious freedom pre- 
cludes that sort of thing. As for the early evangelical 
churches, they would have taken it as an insult had they 


9 Faulkner, Wesley as Sociologist, Theologian, Churchman, p. 


206 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


been accused by their contemporaries of holding the 
opinions on “religious democracy” with which they are 
credited by teachers in some of our modern theological 
seminaries. Again it is true that the leaders in the 
Reformation of the sixteenth century believed in the 
right of private judgment and private interpretation in 
the sense that neither pope, king, nor hangman, neither 
ecclesiastical nor civil authorities, had the right to en- 
force their religious decisions upon any believer or body 
of believers who had obtained more light from Scripture 
or who for any reason differed from the dominant 


church. The assertion, however, that the right of pri- 


vate judgment meant, in the opinion of the Reformers, 
that the ministers or members of their churches had the 
right to teach that which is clearly at variance with 
God’s Word, or that it meant the right to deny the in- 
spiration and authority of Scripture, this opinion is al- 
together unfounded. Neither Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, 
Knox, nor the evangelical dissenters, confounded relig- 


ious ireedom with religious anarchy, after the manner 


of modern liberalism. 

Various liberalistic writers have said, it is impossible 
to determine just what the Bible teaches; they assert 
that it would require an infallible person to interpret the 
Bible, therefore no individual or church has the right to 
say that their interpretation of the Bible is correct. To 
superficial thinking this may be a profound argument. 
Is it true, however, that no one can tell what the Bible 
teaches? Do not Bible students in general agree that 
the Scriptures teach the fundamental doctrines of the 
evangelical churches? Do not, as a rule, even liberalists 
admit this? The denial of the fundamentals on the part 
of liberalism has its cause in the rejection of the authori- 
ty of Scripture. The opinion that the Scriptures do not 


plainly teach the fundamentals must be ascribed to ig- 


norance. 





if hci 
ry Sr a 


RES HR SS 





DISCIPLINE IS NOT PERSECUTION 207 


Again, when you speak of fundamentals, it is needful 
to let people know what you mean; it is necessary to 
define yourself. Dean J. F. Vichert, of Colgate Theo- 
logical Seminary, by way of illustration, in his booklet 
Concerning Fundamentals, states that those who, in his 
view, take “a reactionary attitude” — the conservatives 
—are too exacting in their insistence on definitions. He 
says: “Certain doctrines are [by conservatives] defined 
and declared fundamental. These are to be the test of 
.a man’s fidelity to truth, of his orthodoxy and denomi- 
national standing.” Clearly, however, a doctrine, to be 
worthy of the name, must be stated or defined. And if 
a church holds certain doctrines to be fundamental, they 
ought to be made the test of a man’s orthodoxy and de- 
nominational standing. Dr. Vichert thinks, “this pro- 
ceeding implies a monopoly of truth on the part of those 
who propose it.” He adds: “One wonders whence the 
infallibility came which qualifies any group of men for 
such an undertaking. A moment’s reflection makes 
clear that it is but the claim and practice of the Roman 
church over again. To be sure, the fagot and the stake 
are missing,’ etc. Yet in the same pamphlet this author 
expresses the opinion that men who deny certain teach- 
ings which he considers of fundamental importance 
should be relieved of positions of trust and leadership 
which they may hold. 


Dr. Vichert defends “the right and competency of 
the individual to transact for himself in matters of re- 
ligion,” in other words, the right of liberty of conscience. 
Now the fact deserves notice that this is precisely the 
plea advanced by the said liberalistic leaders who, in our 
author’s view, ought to be relieved of their positions. 
Indeed this right must not be questioned or denied to 
any person. To relieve an unsound teacher of his posi- 
tion, or to exclude him from the church, is not to in- 
fringe upon his rights of religious liberty. To exclude 


208 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


a man who does not stand for the doctrine of the church 
does not constitute an infringement of this sort. On the 
other hand, to demand that such a person should be re- 
tained, clearly involves an infringement upon the rights 
of religious liberty of the church. The church, as well 
as the individual, must have the right to stand for some- 
thing definite in matters of religion. To take such a po- 
sition in no wise involves a claim of infallibility for the 
individual or for the church. It does not require the 
predicate of infallibility to have convictions as to the 
fundamentals taught in God’s Word. A church which 


has no such convictions to stand for is a sorry figure 


indeed. 

The cause of modern liberalism has been advanced in 
no small degree through perversions of history — histo- 
rical falsehoods. We are asked to believe, as we have 
seen, that Protestantism is, essentially, liberalism; that 
the early dissenter churches had no authoritative creeds; 
that Roger Williams was one of the distinguished fa- 
thers of modern liberalism. And these are but a few 
among the many perversions of history on which the 
modern mind has been fed. Modern thought is quite 
credulous toward anything that favors modernism; too 
often it uncritically accepts “things that ain’t so.” 


There are liberalistic churches which claim they have 
no binding or authoritative creed nor any doctrinal test, 
and yet they, to all appearance, shrink from the unavoid- 
able consequences of such a position. The most con- 
spicuous example, probably, of a church which not only 
in theory but in real practice follows the principle of 
“no doctrinal tests,” is the Community Church organ- 
ized by John Haynes Holmes, of New York. Of this 
church it may be truthfully said that it has no binding 
creed. It is Dr. Holmes’ boast that Jews and Buddhists 
are members of it. Dr. Holmes and probably the ma- 
jority of his congregation were formerly Unitarians. A 








7 
a 
i 
x 
xu 


i 


DEFINITE DOCTRINAL POSITION 209 


writer in a Unitarian journal regrets their withdrawal 
from that church and points out that a Unitarian church 
also has the privilege of receiving into membership those 
of non-Christian faith. It must be assumed, however, 
that the members of the Community Church recognize 
the leadership of Jesus in a similar sense as the atheistic 
socialists accept it. Now we are told that they who 
take a position such as the Community Church — stand- 
ing, in plain English, for religious anarchy — are “Rog- 
er Williams’ spiritual heirs” and they only have the 
right to the evangelical name. 

The opinion that a church of any one of the evangel- 
ical denominations which has a binding creed or a doc- 
trinal test, is deviating from the position of the early 
church fathers, is an historical perversion which is un- 
worthy of well-informed people. The contrary is true. 
The early fathers of all evangelical churches, Congrega- 
tionalists, Baptists, and Methodists included, would have 
considered it absurd that a church which does not stand 
for Christian doctrine and has no doctrinal tests should 
lay claim to the Christian name. In this connection it 
may be repeated for emphasis that a body of believers 
may not have a written creed and yet stand faithfully 
for the doctrines of the Christian faith. The Young 
Men’s Christian Association, for example, though it nev- 
er had a written creed, was originally a mighty force for 
evangelical Christianity. Professor Edward Caldwell 
Moore says: “Membership was conditioned not merely 
upon moral character and sympathy with the aims of 
the Association but also upon the acceptance of the doc- 
trines of evangelical denominations. The Association 
thus reflected in its very origin the reaction against lib- 
eralism.,”?° 


The principle of religious freedom and liberty of con- 


10 The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World, p. 99. 


210 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


science, for which some of the early dissenters so ear- 
nestly contended, means that, as a citizen of the state, 
every man has a right to believe and teach any morally 
unobjectionable religious doctrine. You may be fully 
convinced that your neighbor who may be an unbeliev- 
er, is erring religiously, yet the state has no right to 
take him to account for his error. But this principle 
does not mean that a man who does not accept the creed 
for which the church stands, has a right to claim mem- 
bership in the church. The state has its laws to which 
the citizens must conform and those who break the laws 
are temporarily separated by confinement in prisons. 
The church also has its creed and principles by which it 
is maintained and those who do not abide by them must 
be excluded. The principle that every citizen of a given 
state should make his own laws, or, in other words, be 
a law unto himself, and that the state has no right to 
impose its laws upon the citizens — this is the principle 
of anarchy. Just so the assertion that the church should 
have no creed, that she should not stand for anything 
definite as concerns matters doctrinal and religious — 
that every member should follow his own autonomous 
conscience—this is the principle of religious anarchy. 
A people which does not recognize the right of the com- 
monwealth to make binding laws, could not be recog- 
nized as a state. Neither is a group of persons who re- | 
fuse to stand for anything definite religiously and doc- 
trinally, a Christian church. 

The modern notion that religiously there should be 
no recognized standard or authority and that a consist- 
ent believer in religious freedom “don’t obey no orders 
unless they is his own,” is curious indeed. A supposed 
freedom that is not willing to bow to law is not of divine 
but of diabolic origin. A supposed free church that has 
nothing to stand for, besides such matters as social im- 
provement, is a church in name only. It is quite possi- 





RELIGIOUS ANARCHY 211 


ble to build a church of that type, made up of people of 
contradictory interpretations of life and of contrary pro- 
grams of religious action—éin other words, a church 
composed of liberal and orthodox — it is possible to or- 
ganize such a church, provided the orthodox do not take 
their faith seriously. The question is not one of possi- 
bility, however, but of principle. It is not enough that 
the church be free— freedom may be “not according to 
_knowledge” — she must have a purpose—a creed. The 
editor of a liberal journal has these significant words to 
say on the point in question: 

The gist of the matter is that Unitarians make their free- 
dom a principle of dissolution when they say that this freedom 
principle takes the duty out of a church attendance. With a 


good many of us liberalism is organized disunion, religious an- 
archy, a bit of bad thinking applied to religion 


11 The Christian Register, February 7, 1918, p. 9. 


XX \ 


IMMORTALITY 


as ODERN science has undertaken to explain the 
ivi soul as a mere “stream of thought,” to use the 
expression of one of America’s eminent philoso- 
phers, the late Professor William James, of Harvard 
University, who defended this view. Human _ personal-. 
ity in any real sense is denied. If this view were correct 
man could not be immortal in any true sense. If there be 
no soul it would be folly to speak of its immortality. 
Radical modern liberalists have not ceased to speak 
of immortality but they have deprived the word of all 
real meaning. President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark Uni- 
versity, (an eminent representative of the new theolo- 
gy), says: “The only valid immortality is of two kinds, 
influential and eugenic.’”? “The prolonged and rich life 
of posterity here,” he says further, “is the only real ful- 
fillment of the hope of immortality.”? Professor Coe, of 
the Union Theological Seminary, thinks devotion to the 
cause of social regeneration ‘may be a factor in a pro- 
cess whereby immortality, in the literal sense of indis- 
soluble fellowship between persons, is being achieved.’”* 
This is immortality in name only. Modernism, denying 
all supernaturalism, has no room for personal immor- 
tality. Walter Rauschenbusch pointed out that the doc- 
trine of transmigration of souls, or of re-incarnation, is 
held by some of the modern theologians. “This theory,” 
he says further, “seems to offer a fair chance for all, pro- 
vided each soul is really started in the exact environ- 


1 Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, vol. I, p. 15. 
2 The same, vol. II, p. 692. 
3 The Psychology of Religion, p. 298. 





THE AGONY OF UNCERTAINTY 213 


ment which it has earned by its past life and in which it 
can best develop for the future.”* This is a striking indi- 
cation of the ascendency of paganism in nominal Chris- 
tendom. 

Modern liberalism has no answer to the question, 
“If a man die, shall he live again?’ Therefore the rep- 
resentatives of modern religion, in so far as they do not 
deny immortality outright, assume an attitude of gener- 
al indifference on the question of the immortality of the 
soul. President McGiffert has pointed out that theolo- 
gians of today are losing interest in the subject of im- 
mortality and “many Christians, because the life after 
death lies beyond the range of experimental proof [and 
they no longer accept the authority of Scripture], have 
growr indifferent about it.’”° In fact, not a few minis- 
ters 3: tne modern gospel have preached from the pulpit 
that there may be no hereafter. “Men are exhorted to 
find immortality in advancing the race, only remember- 
ed by what they had done,” declared The Continent not 
long ago. Professor Henry C, Vedder, of Crozer Theo- 
logical Seminary, says: . 

Most theologians and preachers declare very positively that 
there is a place called Heaven, where the “saved” will forever 
be happy in the presence of God. There may be such a place; 
nobody can prove that there is not. But neither can the preach- 
ers prove that there is sucha place. There is no adequate ground 
for their confident assertions. When they tell us that there is a 
Heaven, and all about its conditions and life, as if they had actu- 
ally been there and had brought back plans drawn to scale and 
complete. specifications, they are just “pushing wind.” They 
know no more about it than you or I know, and that is just 
nothing at all.é 
Considered from the viewpoint of modernism which de- 
nies the authority of the Scriptures, Professor Vedder 


4A Theology for the Social Gospel, p. 231. 
5 The American Journal of Theology, 1916, p. 325. 
6 Quoted in The Baptist Believer, April, 1920, from Chester 
ews. 


214 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


is right. Unless God has answered these questions for 
us in His Word, we must confess to ignorance concern- 
ing these things. With faith in the Bible as God’s su- 
pernatural revelation goes, as a rule, belief in heaven 
and immortality. 

Various defenders of modernism have expressed the 
opinion that the desire for a future life is essentially self- 
ish. A writer in The Christian Register speaks of this 
desire as “aggravated selfishness.” In the view of these 
writers the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is in- 
compatible with accepted principles of morality. But if 
the desire for a life beyond the grave be unjustifiable, 
would not the life that now is fall under like censure? 
If non-existence be the unselfish thing and there be no 
hereafter, would not self-destruction become a virtuous 
deed? It may be worth while to notice, in passing, that 
the desire for personal salvation has also been interpret- 
ed as selfishness.® | 


The contrast between believing that man’s existence 
is confined to the short span of time of his earthly life, 
and that it extends through an eternity either of bliss or 
of woe is apparent. Belief in the immortality of the 
soul is a tremendous factor in shaping a man’s life on 
earth. It matters much to society, said Professor Gold- 
win Smith, “whether death ends all and conscience is a 
delusion,” for “the churches are a momentous part of 
our social organization, and on these beliefs they rest.’® 
Human responsibility to God and belief in divine justice 
cannot mean much if death ends human existence and 
there is no judgment to follow. Christianity has been 
criticized severely by modernists on account of its other- 
worldliness. But other-worldliness is the natural result 


7 The Christian Register, October 3, 1918, p. 13. 
8 The same, May 29, 1919, p. 13. 
9 The Independent (New York), May 18, 1905. 





HUMANISM NOT RELIGION 215 


of the belief in immortality. Such belief must, as said 
in a preceding paragraph, have a marked influence on 
the lives of thinking people. In fact, true religion is 
necessarily linked with the conviction of immortality. 
“The work of man may center itself in the present world, 
but unless the faith of man extends beyond humanism, 
beyond social betterment and art, it is no religious faith 
at all.” 


XXI 
} 
SCIENCE 


or unproved suppositions, therefore theology also 
might content itself with “workable hypotheses” as 
its underlying principles. While it is true that much 


[: has been said that all science rests on hypotheses 


that popularly goes for science is nothing more than: 


supposition, this can by no means be said of all science. 


Modern science, indeed, works largely with hypotheses 


and theories. It need not be said that this is in itself 
entirely unobjectionable. A scientist has the undoubted 


right to set up a hypothesis. If he succeeds in proving | 


and establishing it, this particular view ceases to be a 
hypothesis. It is only when scientists teach mere hy- 
potheses as if they were established truth, or when they 
work with hypotheses that are contrary to Scripture 
that we must object. The weak point in modern sci- 
ence is that certain unproved theories are treated as and 
given the appearance of established truths. 

It should be added that science in so far as it has to 
do with practical things, such for example as medicine 
and surgery, the use of electricity, etc., is established on 
facts, not on mere hypotheses. While it is true that a 
theory may help a physician in his effort to find effect- 
ive remedies, the value of a given remedy depends solely 
on the fact that it brings the desired results. The prop- 
erties and effects of drugs are known to physicians. 


If a medical “science” which consisted of hypothe- 


ses, instead of being based on fact and truth, and tested 
by experience, would be worthless, what about a theol- 


ogy which deals only with hypotheses and does not 





RELIGION AND SCIENCE AY, 


claim to have absolute truth or fact, but admittedly of- 
fers only relative, subjective, imaginary truth? Chris- 
tianity is an historical religion. It depends for its right 
to exist on certain historical facts, such as the incarna- 
tion of Christ and His work for the salvation of man- 
kind. Deny these truths and you have lost your foun- 
dation for the Christian faith. 


The statement that there is no conflict between sci- 
. ence and religion has various meanings depending upon 
the personal position of the one who may use such an ex- 
pression. A Christian believer saying that there is no 
conflict between science and religion means that the 
claims of modern science, in so far as they are antago- 
nistic to Scripture, are unfounded. A modernist using 
the same expression means the very contrary, namely 
that religion is acceptable only in so far as it is based on 
natural law and is explainable by science. 

Now the principal facts on which the Christian re- 
ligion is founded are of miraculous nature. The incar- 
nation and resurrection of Jesus Christ and other mira- 
cles cannot be explained by natural law or science, nei- 
_ther can the divine work of grace in the human heart be 
so explained. It is due to the direct working of the 
Holy Spirit. These things are consequently disowned by 
the more advanced modernists. They hold a monistic 
view of the world and insist that there is no such thing 
as the working of God above and beyond natural law. 
They declare that all truth is uniform with the same 
laws of nature and therefore the supernatural is unreal. 

Now modern science, by taking an attitude of nega- 
tion with reference to the supernatural, over-steps the 
bounds of its own realm. The fact is that nature itself 
and natural law is a proof of the possibility of the mira- 
cle. Nothing less than the supernatural, miraculous 
work of God can account for the existence of nature. 
Evolution does not offer a real explanation. Most‘evo- 


218 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


lutionists admit that they cannot explain how life orig- 
inated upon earth. The origin of life calls for a work 
that is superior to natural law —a miracle. Again they 
who assert that man is nothing more than a highly de- 
veloped animal make an assertion which is not only in- 
capable of evidence but is clearly contrary to fact. 

A miracle cannot be explained by natural law or by 
science, yet science is unscientific when it asserts that 
a miracle is impossible to God. ‘There is no scientific 
evidence whatever against the omnipotence of God, or 
the Deity of Christ, or any other doctrine of the Chris- 
tian faith. On the contrary, as already stated, nature it- 
self is a witness for God, and there is in Christian experi- 
ence abundant proof of the possibility of the supernat- 
ural and miraculous. The Christian believer who makes 
faithful use of his privileges, lives in the atmosphere of 
the supernatural. So far from believing that the super- 
natural is impossible, he is convinced that. God’s Word 
is true. 

Though between the natural and the supernatural, or 
miraculous, there is a vital difference, it is needful to 
keep in mind that God may use natural law to accom- 
plish a particular purpose. The supernatural, on the 
other hand, is done above and beyond natural law. To 
say with modernism that the supernatural is impossible 
is to deny the omnipotence of God. 

The most objetionable hypothesis of modern science 
is the theory of naturalism. This is the assumption that 
there is nothing beyond nature and material or natural 
forces. There is, according to this theory, neither di- 
vine revelation nor miracle. There is no God beyond or 
above immanent natural law. This theory is radically 
antagonistic to the Christian faith. Naturalism is in a 
large measure responsible for the fact that the higher 
institutions of science have become hotbeds of infidelity. 

Moncure D. Conway, in his autobiography, points to 








“FAILING RELIGIOUS CONSCIENCE” 219 


the failure of modern science, after having weakened the 
faith in supernaturalism, to furnish a sufficient ethical 
guide. He quotes his friend Goldwin Smith as fore- 
seeing “fatal results to the next generation unless sci- 
ence can construct something to take the place of the 
failing religious conscience.” Is not the hope that sci- 
ence will do anything of this sort futile? Unless men 
are willing to accept the supernatural revelation of God 
in Scripture, they will never have an adequate founda- 
tion for ethics and religion. To take science, instead of 
divine revelation, for such a basis is to build on a founda- 
tion of sand. Naturalism in morality and in religion is 
fatal to both. None other than President Arthur Cush- 
man McGiffert has pointed out that science, if taken as 
a basis for morality, is an utter failure. He says: “Sci- 
ence does not make for democracy but for aristocracy 
and autocracy.” /.fter elucidating this point further 
this author says: 

The ideal of democracy could hardly have arisen in a scien- 
tific age.— Science gives us not the ideal of democracy but of 
the superman, the ideal of autocracy and imperialism.—If we 
want a democracy it is because we are idealists, or because we 
_are religious men, not mere scientists, and if democracy is to 


prevail, it will be because idealism triumphs over brute fact and 
religion forces science to do its bidding.1 


Science does not furnish any evidence in favor of 
naturalism. On the other hand, it would be out of the 
question to suppose that science, without the aid of rev- 
elation, could give us adequate information concerning 
God, His character and man’s relationship to Him. It 
is a popular fallacy that men of science know more about 
these things than those who have not studied science. 
It is inexcusable for men of science to undertake the set- 
tlement of questions that are beyond their realm, as did, 
for example, the unbeliever Laplace, when he said, he 


1 Religious Education, June, 1919, p. 156 ff. 


220 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


had searched the heavens with the most powerful instru- 
ments and had failed to find God. It is readily seen that 
this statement, instead of proving the non-existence of 
God, is only evidence of the well-known truth that 
learned men sometimes lack wisdom, 

Modern naturalistic science should not assume that 
it can speak authoritatively on the greatest questions, as 
if it had the means and ways to investigate the great 
spiritual verities that lie beyond the physical. To ac- 
cept the dogma of naturalism is therefore thoroughly 
unscientific. Naturalistic science has made a dogma of 
a hypothesis for which there is absolutely no proof, and 
with unheard-of haughtiness it assumes that those who 
refuse to accept the new dogma are behind the times and 
have no right to their belief. | | : 

No orthodox theologian was ever so dogmatic as the 
materialistic scientist who alleges that his scientific 
learning does not permit him to accept the Christian 
fundamentals; he means merely that they will not fit 
his own dogma and unfounded hypotheses. Here, then, 
namely in the field of modern science as taught in many 
of our institutions of higher education, is dogma for- 
sooth. Modernistic dogma is, as a matter of fact, not 
based on revelation, as is the Christian dogma; nor has 
it any other worthy foundation. Its foundation is the 
notions and predilections of unbelieving men. There- 
fore naturalistic dogma is not worthy of acceptance by 
those who do their own thinking. 

In effect, then, we have mainly two dogmatisms fac- 
ing each other. On the one hand there is the dogma of 
Christianity which is based on Scripture and confirmed 
by Christian experience. On the other hand is the dog- 
matism of what a recent writer calls naive, uncritical 
naturalism which assumes that it has the last word on 
the questions of God and human destiny and that the 
mechanical interpretation of the universe is the sole and 





NO ANSWER TO MOST VITAL QUESTIONS 2721 


absolute truth, overlooking entirely the outstanding fact 
that the naturalistic theory has no foundation except in 
the materialistic, anti-Christian spirit of the age. 

And yet science, notwithstanding all its materialistic 
attainments, recognizes today that there are many far 
inferior quesions to which it has no answer. It does not 
know, e. ¢., what electricity or gravitation is. “We have 
a remarkable chemistry of commerce and have rescued 
‘a thousand waste products,” says Professor J, A. W. 
Haas. “We have created an apparently new physical 
chemistry which rests on mathematical exactitude. But 
have we pried any more deeply into the secrets of at- 
oms, or electrons, or ions, or corpuscles? Can we an- 
swer the ultimate question of chemical research?” <A 
writer in The Hibbert Journal thinks, the time will come 
“when the average man has learned, as well as the phil- 
osopher knows now, that all our science and positive in- 
formation has not brought us one whit nearer intrinsic 
acquaintance with the fundamental conditions of exist- 
ence.” Herbert Spencer, in one of his later books, 
wrote: “Could we penetrate the mysteries of existence, 
-there would remain still greater mysteries.” President 
William L. Bryan, of Indiana University, says: “You 
have the scholar’s secret that the learning of the univer- 
sity is not perfect, is never perfect, is always changing 
in small or great.’ ; 

A popular magazine writer, Dr. Frank Crane, has 
called attention to the fact that true progress must mean 
more than the use of modern inventions. He says: 

There is no human value in mechanism. — We are living in 
the full blaze of the era of invention. Our typeman is Thomas 
Edison, working away at a phonograph and ridiculing the idea 
of a man having a soul and of life after death. Yet I doubt if an 
absolute perfection of invention and machinery would be of any 


2 Vol. XII, p. 754. 
3 The Biblical World, December, 1914, p. 390. 


222 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


real help to men. That I can own a clock, wind it up, and tell 
time by it, does nothing appreciable to me. I am no more of a 
man than if I told the hour by a sun-dial. If I can run a loco- 
motive, or ride in a Pullman, or operate a wireless telegraph ap- 
paratus, or guide a steamboat, or use a patent cigar-lighter, what 
of it? 

Nothing really benefits man but such a thing as helps devel- 
op (1) his body or (2) his spirit (including his intellectual and 
emotional life). Whatever makes me sounder, stronger, and 
healthier physically is good; so also is whatever improves my 
reasoning faculties, deepens my affections, and brings order, 
peace, and efficiency out of the confusion of my desires. —I can- 
not see how a stop-watch, a microscope, or a power-loom does 
either one of these two services. Material progress is not neces- 
sarily civilization—#in fact, it may go along with thoroughly 
vile ideas of life. Civilization can be furthered only by such 
forces as make men stronger in body, more capable in brain, and 
nobler in heart. 3 


A comparatively new branch of science may deserve 
to be mentioned here: the psychology of religion. Mod- 
ern religious psychology deals with religion as a natur- 
al phenomenon in human life. It represents the natural 
or biological view of religion. Religion and religious 
experience are considered the result of entirely explica- 
ble psychical forces. Religion is recognized only as a 
natural property of man; supernatural religion is ignor- 
ed. Modern religious psychology would reduce all the 
varied expression of religion, whether Christian or pa- 
gan, to biology, that is to say, to commonly prevalent 
instincts and impulses. But strange as it may appear, 
the radical liberalistic psychology of religion denies that 
there is a distinct religious instinct; it denies that 
there is a personal God. In other words, it disavows 
the genuineness of religion. If religion is defined as 
mere morality, or if morality is given the name of relig- 
ion, there is no religion left to psychologize about. It. 
would then be appropriate to speak of the psychology of 
morality instead of religious psychology. 





XXII 


EVOLUTIONISM 


the creative work of God. God is the Creator, 

Preserver and Ruler of the world. This is denied 
by modern naturalism. The prevalent type of naturalism 
is Evolutionism. The theory of evolution offers another 
explanation for the existence of the material universe. 
Evolutionism holds that the earth with all that exists 
thereon is the result of the natural process of develop- 
ment. According to the hypothesis of evolution the 
forces necessary for such development are immanent in 
matter, in the organisms and in their environment. “The 
doctrine of evolution may be defined,” says Professor 
E. D. Cope, “as the teaching which holds that creation 
has been and is accomplished by the agency of the ener- 
gies which are intrinsic in the evolving matter, and with- 
out the interference of agencies which are external to 
it.”*- Huxley once said: “The doctrine of evolution is di- 
rectly antagonistic to that of creation. Evolution, if 
consistently accepted, makes it impossible to believe 
in the Bible.” 

Evolutionism, it should be noted, has no answer to 
the question how mere natural forces could have chanced 
to produce order as we see it in the universe. We 
are asked to believe the unbelievable miracle that mere 
forces which are inherent in matter created accidentally 
that which could only have been called into existence by 
an intelligence of the highest order. 


Te Scriptures teach that the world is the result of 


1 Quoted, The Reformed Church Review, 1914, p. 522. 
2 Professor A. S. Zerbe, in The Reformed Church Messenger, 
April 24, 1919. 


224 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


It has been supposed that the evolutionary theory 
could be made acceptable to Christian believers by mak- 
ing Evolution simply the method of divine creation. Va- 
rious writers have so modified Evolution that it has be- 
come quite another thing from the hypothesis that pass- 
es by that name and with which the modern world is so 
familiar. It is true that God could have made use of ev- 
olution as the method of creation, but the Bible teaches 
distinctly that man was not evolved from animal spe- 
cies, that he is not the result of development but of spe- 
cial creation. hia 

The advocates of a modified theory of evolution 
have supposed that there need be no fear that Evolu- 
tion may eliminate God from the world, so long as He, 
besides the natural forces, may be believed to be back of 
the supposed development. The fact, however, is only 
too evident that, in consequence of the acceptance of 
Evolutionism, God is less and less recognized in the 
modern intellectual world. Obviously Evolutionism has 
atheistic tendencies. It has been rightfully said that 
“the theories of evolution reduce existing things to so 
small beginnings that the creation of them seems scarce- 
ly worthy of the supreme Being.”* “The modernist’s 
thought of the world process as a mode of spiritual evo- 
lution makes no call for a God,” says Dr. Charles F. 
Dole.* Professor Herbert Alden Youtz, who accepts the 
doctrine of Evolution, points out that it has in many in- 
stances, even on the field of theology, led to mechanism, 
materialism and atheism.® Today the world of science 
scarcely takes God into the account, except in the sense 
that they speak of the forces of nature as God. Leading 
evolutionists consider it their business to show that nat- 


8 The American Journal of Theology, 1915, p. 556. 
4 The Christian Register, February 20, 1919, p. 174. - 
5 Democratizing Theology, p. 14. 





EVOLUTIONISM BASED ON THEORY 225 


ural forces are sufficient to account for the existence of 
the universe as it is today. 

Professor A. S. Zerbe, of Central Theological Semi- 
nary, Dayton, Ohio, describes the religious aspect of Ev- 
olution as follows: 


According to the view of evolutionary science man traces his 
ancestry directly to some high order of animal, as the ape or 
chimpanzee, but ultimately and originally to a very low order of 
life, as the amoeba. The method by which scientists reach this 
conclusion is somewhat circuitous, but it may be stated briefly 
as follows: Science starts with the pantheistic postulate that the 
universe had no beginning in time but has always existed, its 
existence being due, not to a Supreme Being, or God, but to 
some resident force or energy.— To support this claim all sorts 
of theories, hypotheses, conjectures and make-shifts are advanc- 
ed. — Naturally under this view the old Bible doctrine of the ex- 
istence of a Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe and of 
man, must be given up, together with practically everything that 
is distinctive of the. Bible and the Christian religion.’ 


William Jennings Bryan says: 

The theory that links man in generations with the ape has 
paralyzed religious thought and the usefulness of so many of the 
intellectuals of the world during the last half century. That man 
bears the image of God and not the likeness of the animals be- 
‘low him, is the foundation stone upon which one must build. 
The theory advanced by Darwin puts God so far away that man 
loses the consciousness of His presence in daily life. 

Though Evolution is an unproved supposition it has 
become an integral part of “the modern mind.” Hence 
theologians, in so far as they are willing to take their 
orders from the crowd, have undertaken to adjust their 
theology to this popular hypothesis. The representa- 
tives of the new theology tell us that the church will 
fail unless she accepts Evolutionism. The adjustment 
of theology to the theory of evolution has resulted in 
theological naturalism. Modernist theology is not root- 
ed in Scriptures but in naturalistic theories. Just as sec- 


6 The Reformed Church Messenger, April 24, 1919. 


226 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ular modern science considers the universe, as it exists 
today, the result of Evolution, so modern theology be- 
lieves the Christian religion, as well as all other relig- 
ions, to be also the product of a natural evolutionary 
process. The divine revelation in Scripture is denied; 
it is claimed that in the Scriptures men have simply re- 
vealed their own thought about God. We are told that 
there has never been a direct divine intervention in the 
history of the world. God did not intervene for revelia- 
tion, nor for the redemption of man, nor ever in answer 
to prayer. In fact, since God is supposed to be merely 
an immanent force or energy, there is no God who could 
intervene in the course of nature. God is, from this 
point of view, the creature of man’s imagination. George 
Burman Foster, e. g. speaks of “man’s God-making ca- 
pacity.” “In short, a secular rather than an ecclesias- 
tical explanation of the origin of Christianity is coming 
to be a commonplace in theological literature,’ wrote 
Gerald Birney Smith in 1913.8 

The new theology teaches, as we have seen, that 
there never has been particular divine revelation to man, 
neither through Scripture nor any other agency. Hence 
what is generally called theology is nothing but suppo- 
sition and speculation — human thought on these ques- 
tions; and human thought is always in a process of 
change. It would follow that there is no final or absolute 
truth, or, in plain English, there is no religious truth. 
All supposed religious truth is relative and subjective; 


it cannot be looked upon as real truth. This is freely 


taught by new theology writers. “The consequence of 
this evolutionary point of view,” writes Dr. Gerald Bir- 
ney Smith, “is the elimination of that quest for finalities 
and absolutes which is characteristic of the older theo- 


a The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 
ina, 


8 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 95. 





“NO HARBOR OF REFUGE” SNA 


logical method.’® William Adams Brown, former Presi- 
dent of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, 
after pointing out that the liberalism which he defends 
has disowned “the outworn standard” of an infallible Bi- 
ble, as well ts the authority of Jesus, says: “When one 
has once deserted the shores of absolutism and launched 
one’s bark upon the sea of relativity, there is no harbor, 
however small, in which one may hope to find a refuge.” 

It will be recalled that Albrecht Ritschl taught the 
subjectivity of all religious and moral knowledge what- 
soever; he believed there are no religious or moral final- 
ities, or absolutes, and that the value of religious doc- 
trines. depends on their usefulness, not on their truth. 
His teaching on “value judgments” shifts the questien 
of the truth of a doctrine to that of is value or useful- 
ness. <he new theology teaches that religious ideas are 
to be used rather than believed and whether a doctrine 
is true or not is a secondary matter. Indeed these re- 
ligious or theological ideas themselves are believed, by 
their very exponents, to be of secondary, non-vital im- 
portance, though they are supposed to serve a useful 
purpose. It is indeed a remarkable fact that there are 
those who accept that which is known to be not the 
truth and is not even supposed to be true. But again 
there are those who find it impossible to accept such 
propositions. They continue to hold fast to the old- 
fashioned principle that truth is of more value than oth- 
er values, and hence mere value judgments that are not 
founded on truth are not worthy of serious consideration, 

Evolution, according to the Unitarian Confession, 
means the continuous “progress of mankind onward and 
upward forever.” It means that mankind is traveling 
gradually and steadily up an inclined plane to the City 


_ 9% The American Journal of Theology, 1915, p. 139. Italics 
mine. 
10 The same, 1912, p. 34. Italics mine. 


228 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


of God, as someone has said; Christianity is regarded a 
gentle stimulant to this splendid cosmic climb. But the 
stimulating effect of Christianity in this process is, in 
modernist opinion, apparent rather than real, for both 
religion and morality are held to be only parts of the 
evolutionary process itself. Man is considered merely 
a part of nature, and it follows “that he, like nature, is 
under the reign of law.” This conception leaves no room 
for human freedom. 


“Naturalism denies our freedom and responsibility 
and makes our consciousness that we are free but a be- 
nificent illusion,’ says Professor Alfred E. Garvie.** 
Henry van Dyke observes that “the modern fatalism is 
Calvinism with the bottom knocked out.” While Calvin- 
ism recognizes the supreme will of a holy and righteous 
God, the new fatalism denies the existence of a personal 
God who exercises free will. Therefore the modern nat- 
uralism is removed from the teaching of Augustine and 
Calvin as far as the East is removed from the West. 
Dean Fenn, of Harvard, has well said that “the course 
of Unitarian thought presents one of the most remark- 
able curves in all theological history.” He points out 
‘that under the new “Calvinism of immanence, the free- 
dom of man must again be doubted, if not denied.”!* 
Professor Herbert Alden Youtz, a representative of the 
new theology, says: “The virtual [modernistic] fatalism 
of much so-called Christian philosophy [as taught in 
some of our colleges and theological seminaries] strikes 
at the very beating heart of all spiritual conviction, and 
unmans, emasculates, and stultifies our creative efforts.” 


In conclusion it may be worthy of notice that relig- 
ious liberalists as a rule close their eyes to the fact that 


11 The Christian Certainty Amid the Modern Perplexity, p. 327. 
12 Platner, The Religious History of New England, p. 129. 
13 Democratizing Theology, p. 15. 


= oes ee 





MODERNIST INCONSISTENCY 229 


the modern theology does not fit into the evolutionary 
scheme. They tell us that the apostles misunderstood 
Christ and therefore erroneously preached a supernat- 
ural religion. Hence all Christendom from the apostles’ 
time to the rise of modern liberalism was wrong in the 
interpretation of Christianity. According to religious 
liberalism the long period of about eighteen hundred 
years was an age of religious deterioration, not of evolu- 
tion, and only recently has Christianity been brought 
back to its first estate by the modernists. This is an il- 
lustration of inconsistent liberalistic thinking. 


XXIII 


% 


WHAT AILS OUR COLLEGES AND SEMINARIES 


as well as for the state, lies in education,” has been 
advanced by not a few recent writers. On the oth- 
er hand there are those who see clearly that knowledge, 
or education, in itself is religiously and morally neutral. 


T= opinion that “the only salvation for the church, 


It may be acquired and not used, and again it may be 


used for good or for ill, depending on the character of 


the one who has acquired it. Dr. Nathaniel Butler, 


Dean of the School of Pedagogy in the University of 
Chicago, has well said in The Christian Student: 


We live no longer in the expectation that the millennium 
will come through education. We once thought that if we were 
in condition to found good schools and to bring the boys and 
girls under the influence of a good education, we could finally 
put a stop to all unrighteousness and sin. But the fact of it is 
that education with reference to that point is a total failure. 
Men do no act according to their knowledge, but they do the 
things they love to do. It matters not how high we may educate 
the understanding, the man can, in spite of it, remain a slave to 
his passions. Mankind do not act according to their best knowl- 
edge and wisdom, but do the things they love to do. — While 
education of the intellect may cause its possessor to beware of 
the grosser sins, it, at the same time, may be only a means of 
making the nmran more cunning. 


We shall presently quote a number of writers who 
are of the opinion that higher education, or the acquisi- 
tion of it, has undesirable irreligious tendencies. Not 
for a moment must it be supposed, however, that a high- 
ly educated person is made acquainted with facts which 
are irreconcilable with the teachings of the Christian 
faith, or that knowledge in itself is possessed of unde- 





THE FAITH OF CHILDHOOD Zot 


sirable tendencies. Such a supposition would be en- 
tirely erroneous. It is true that in many institutions of 
higher learning certain unproved theories are taught 
(such as the hypothesis of evolution) which are con- 
trary to Scripture teaching, and this accounts for much 
in the way of irreligious influences. Another weighty 
reason why our colleges and universities are turning out 
unbelievers is because the professors, in many instances, 
make it a point to persuade the students that “the 
faith of their childhood” must be discarded. 

The question is here in order, what is this “faith of 
our childhood” which, we are told, must be abandoned? 
Clearly it is the old Bible faith: that Christ, the Only- 
begotten of the Father, came into this world from an- 
other realm to redeem and save mankind, that He died 
on the cross as our substitute and rose from the dead, 
etc. It is the faith that believes that God hears and an- 
swers prayer. In short it is the faith that accepts the 
Bible as true — the faith which is taught in our homes, 
Sunday schools, and churches. Children, of course, will 
not grasp the real import of these truths like those of 
more mature age; there is a difference in the degree in 
- which the facts and truths of the faith are comprehended 
and appreciated; but unless children receive erroneous 
teaching, the faith of childhood, as concerns its content 
and truths, is the same as that of maturer age, 

With some praiseworthy exceptions our denomina- 
tional colleges (speaking now of the Northland) stand 
for a liberalized faith and the abandonment of the faith 
of childhood by the student, while in state institutions 
even liberalized religion is often decried and antago- 
nized. Nor do the colleges, as a rule, deny that such is 
their attitude on the point in question. Professor Wal- 
ter Scott Athearn, of Boston University, the author of 
various books on religious education, writes: “Our col- 
leges are engaged in the work of shattering religious 


232 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


conceptions and either ignoring the consequences or 
holding joint sessions with Christian associations to de- 
vise ways and means of unloading their victims onto 
voluntary classes of religion whose amateurs will at- 
tempt to rebuild what professionalism has destroyed.”* 
Dr. William Bancroft Hill, Professor in Vassar Col- 
lege, says: 

The great religious problem in every college is the same — 
to prevent the student from putting away religion when, in the 


process of development, he puts away childish things [referring 
to the faith of his childhood]. The faith that he brought to 


college is the faith of his childhood — simple, unchallenged, and 


suited to the life of the home. In college he finds himself in a 
new world of thought where his most cherished convictions seem 
inadequate or erroneous, and he must either enlarge and deepen 
his faith or else abandon it.2 

The religious task of our liberalized colleges is, ac- 
cordingly, supposed to be of a twofold nature: There is 
abundant evidence to show that Professor Athearn is 
right in his opinion that the colleges are engaged in the 
work of shattering the religious conceptions of the stu- 
dents — the faith of our homes and churches. In this 
seif-appointed task they are in a majority of cases ap- 
parently successful. On the other hand, their endeavor 
to persuade the students of the excellency of religious 
liberalism, and to save them for the church after they 
have accepted the modern religious views, is found more 
difficult. Indeed, liberalistic professors complain that 
students in the colleges make shipwreck of faith, name- 
ly of liberalistic faith, as well as of the old Bible faith. 
If the liberalized students are persuaded to remain with- 
in the church, they seem to be of the opinion that the 
church has no mission that is really worth their while. 

“There is a common complaint that college experi- 
ence .... not only does not increase the loyalty of 


1 The Church Scheel, p. 256. 
2 The Biblical World, August, 1915, p. 111. 





a %, - 
. 4 ae 
rer ee 


————- a. 


DANGERS OF HIGHER EDUCATION Vay) 


young people to the church but actually cools their ar- 
dor,” says Dr. George Albert Coe, of the Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, New York.® Professor Gerald Birney 
Smith, of the University of Chicago, writes: 

There is a widespread feeling among devout evangelical 
Christians that modern scholarship is somewhat dangerous to 
religious faith, Many a boy or girl today is warned by parent 
and by pastor against the “skeptical” influences of a college 
course. — That religious shipwreck [i. e., the discarding of lib- 
eral as well as Biblical religion] has been the fate of a significant 
number of college graduates is a fact which cannot be denied.4 


William Jennings Bryan says: 


Higher education brings with it dangers against which the 
student should be warned.— Some instructors even speak lightly 
of religion, and, by clothing infidelity in the attractive garb of 
science and philosophy, lead their pupils into agnosticism—a 
tragedy which is the more distressing when we remember that 
college men not only have a prominence far out of proportion to 
their numbers but exert an influence upon a still larger circle 
whose members look up to them for example. 


Not long ago a religious editor published a symposi- 
um on The College Graduates’ Attitude to the Church. 
He requested a number of his readers to state their own 
“experience and convictions on this subject. “But we 
discovered,” he informs us, “that not a few seemed un- 
willing to express themselves, at least for publication. 
There seemed to be a fear that if they wrote candidly 
and definitely, a number of persons, both in the congre- 
gation and outside of it, might have their feelings hurt. 
One of our leading pastors who has in his congregation 
graduates from all the leading institutions of the coun- 
try, declared that only one of the entire number is active- 
ly identified with the work of the Church.”® One of the 
replies received by this editor is, because of its frank 


‘8 A Social Theory of Religious Education, p. 274. 
4 The Biblical World, 1913, p. 9. 
5 The Reformed Church Messenger, September 12, 1918. 


234 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


statements of fact, quoted here almost in full. The writ- 
er of the same signs himself “A City Pastor.” He says: 


It is not cowardice, as you might infer, but tact combined 
with necessity that causes me to refrain from signing my name 
to this statement of my experience. Were I to sign my name, I 
would be compelled, in the interests of the congregation I serve, 
as well as for family reasons, to omit a part of the unpleasant 
truth. I prefer not to omit this, because I think such a discus- 
sion should be perfectly frank. It is a fact that no one disap- 
pointment in my pastoral experience has been greater than the 
general unwillingness of college-bred men and women in my 
Church to do their fair share of the work. Too often it has been 


their part to sneer at the faithful souls who are carrying the 


burden and heat of the day, because many of the latter were not 
as intelligent as they. But so far as any real “lifting” is con- 
cerned, I have had little help from those whose educational ad- 
vantages gave promise of superior usefulness. My own daugh- 
ters, I regret to say, were far more useful before they went away 
to school than they are since they graduated, in spite of all the 
appeals I have made to them to cast no discredit upon their Al- 
ma Mater [one of the denominational colleges] or upon their fa- 
ther and his work. Now they have to be coaxed, and assume 
any task in such a mood that I feel ashamed and cannot under- 
stand why their training at a Christian institution should not 
have sent them back to me with a greater desire to serve. But 
in this respect I feel they are like approximately three-fourths 
of the college graduates in the congregation— busy critics, but 
poor workers. Some of these highly educated “do-nothings” 
would be willing to “accept the nomination” for any appointment 
that meant high honors without sacrifice of much time, money or 
effort — but the “grind” of teaching God’s word to little children 
week after week, or drilling a Junior C. E., is “asking too much.” 
They seem to think their time has become too valuable to waste 
upon Christian work. 

Talking about the importance of morale, I feel sure that the 
morale of my congregation would improve at least one hundred 
per cent if the forty-nine college-bred members of my flock 
would set a better example and prove to the rank and file of the 
membership that training in a higher institution does not unfit 
anyone for useful service in the Church of which he professes to 
be a member. True, I have in my Consistory two men who have 
several university degrees and fellowships and who are among 


cS oth 


: Soe 8 Ghee 
i ee | et Oe ee 





UNIVERSITY INFLUENCES 235 


the most helpful laymen I have ever seen or known in the Re- 
formed Church. Also, do I thank God for several noble women, 
true “yoke-fellows in the Gospel.” But the fidelity of these ap- 
pears to be the exception rather than the rule, when I recall how 
many are unreliable and inactive, even in these times of direst 
necessity when God is so evidently summoning His people to be 
and do their best. I hate to say it, Mr. Editor, but to refrain 
would be to stultify myself; J do not believe that the majority of 
those advantaged by training in ouwr higher institutions are doing 
their fair share in the local churches. For some reason, great 
. numbers of them have “fallen down on the job,” and the work of 
countless pastors is harder because the intellectually privileged 
are so derelict in their plain duty. Let our educational leaders 
give heed to this situation. If we pastors are to blame, tell us 
how and why. 

The religious influence of the average university and 
the more outspokenly liberalistic college is well set forth 
in the following illustration by Dr, Russell H. Conwell: 

I had a dog. He was an excellent fox dog. I was so proud 
of him. He could follow a trail better than any dog I had ever 
seen, but I thought he ought to know something more than that. 
What we call a dog’s scent is not smell, but an unfathomable in- 
stinct. Man is born with this same instinct. We all have it if 
we have not destroyed it by education. We go to a university 
and there destroy our natural religious instincts in the same 
-way. I invited all the boys of that village in the Berkshire Hills 
to come up to the barn one day. I showed the fox to the dog, 
then iet the fox go. It went over the meadow and up the hill- 
side, and I soon followed the trail and sowed red pepper where 
I had seen the fox go over the hill. Then I went back to the 
barn and let the dog out. I said to the boys, “We are going to 
teach this dog something. He needs an education.” The dog 
ran like a shot to the track of the fox. But when he struck the 
red pepper he snarled, began to sneeze and cried piteously. Then 
he ran down to the brook, whining all the way, and held his head 
half under the water to overcome the sting of the red pepper in 
his nose. He had attended the university of red pepper. He 
had learned all about red pepper, but I could never get him to 
follow a fox again. He had been educated away from the most 
important instinct of his nature. The university of red pepper 
had destroyed his natural instinct for following foxes. So, many 
men are religious and true and good until they go to school and 


236 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


there lose or cover the very best traits and instincts of their life. 


A noteworthy book, published not long ago by Pro- 
fessor James H. Leuba, of Bryn Mawr College,® gives 
reliable information about the religious status and influ- 
ences of the Christian colleges of America, showing in 
what degree some of the most fundamental truths of the 
Christian faith have been discarded. Dr. Leuba has un- 
dertaken the task of ascertaining to what extent Ameri- 
can scholars, scientists and college students believe in 
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. 
The iacts which he presents for consideration were 
gleaned from a very careful questionnaire investigation. 
Space forbids to describe here the thorough-going, im- 
partial method by which he obtained the data on which 
his conciusions are based. 

The results of this investigation give a great deal of 
material for sober thought. The data collected by Pro- 
fessor Leuba would indicate that only 14 per cent of psy- 
chologists, 18 per cent of biologists, 19 per cent of so- 
ciologists, 32 per cent of historians and 34 per cent of 
physicists believe in the existence of God. The number 
of those who accept the immortality of the soul is some- 
what larger. One of the most notable results of the in- 
vestigation is the fact that among college students the 
percentage of believers is far larger in the lower than in 
the higher classes, showing that the influence of the col- 
leges 1s in a measure responsible for the prevailing un- 
belief. From 40 to 50 per cent of the young men leaving 
college do not accept the belief in a God who answers 
prayer, 

It will bear emphasis that these figures represent 
stubborn facts. ‘The careful reader will not be disposed 
to deny the great—-we might almost say the alarming 
— significance of these statistics,” says a reviewer of the 


8 The Belief in God and Immortality. 





INFIDELITY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS 237 


book in question.? “We have looked in vain these two 
years,” writes Professor A. S. Zerbe, of the Central The- 
ological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio, “for a denial of the 
correctness of Leuba’s figures, but unless the denial es- 
caped our notice, we must conclude that he records 
facts.”® A reviewer in The American Journal of Theology 
says: “The author has put in his debt all those who have 
the welfare of religion at heart by showing them that 
the situation 1s really much more serious than most of 
them had supposed.’® Professor William Brenton Greene, 
Jr., of Princeton Theological Seminary, concludes a 
noteworthy article on this book as follows: 


In his latest book Professor Leuba exhibits with awful 
clearness the kind of teaching that prevails in our so-called 
Christian colleges and also the wide and blighting and terrible 
influence of that teaching. These are subjects on which the 
churches have long needed, if they have not always wanted light. 
Now that they have it, what is their duty? Their life depends 
on their answer.1° 


Dr, Leuba sums up the results of his inquiry: 


The situation revealed by the present statistical studies de- 
mands a revision of public opinion regarding the prevalence of 
the two cardinal beliefs of official Christianity; and shows the 
futility of the efforts of those who would meet the present relig- 
ious crisis by devising a more efficient organization and co-opera- 
tion of the churches, or more attractive social features, or even 
a more complete consecration of the church membership to its 
task. The essential problem facing organized Christianity is con- 
stituted by the widespread rejection of its two fundamental dog- 
mas. 


Shocking as are the revelations given in Dr. Leuba’s 
book concerning the religious position of many of our 
college professors, a more serious matter is the fact that 


7 Profesor Benjamin W. Bacon, in The Christian Register, 
May 9, 1918. 

8 The Reformed Church Messenger, April 24, 1919. 

2 Vol. XXI, October, 1917, p. 633. 

10 The Princeton Theological Review, 1917, p. 346. 


238 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


men questioning the existence of God and the immor- 
tality of the soul are found even among the leaders of 
theological thought in the seminaries. A striking testi- 
mony to the point is found in an editorial review of Dr. 
Leuba’s work, published in a liberalistic magazine. It 
is pointed out by the writer of this review that, if Pro- 
fessor Leuba had sent his questionnaire to leading the- 
ologians, “he might have been surprised at the answers,” 
for “he might have found some of them less concerned 
about the dogmas of the church than he seems to be, 
and as wide-awake to the real problems facing the church 
and modern society as are the scientists, historians, so- 
ciologists, and psychologists.” 

Is it possible, it may be asked, that there are Chae: 
tian theologians who question the existence of God and 
the immortality of the soul, and who are less concerned 
about the most cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith 
than is Professor Leuba, who is an avowed unbeliever? 
Yes, this is the case, as will be shown elsewhere. 
Wherein, then, we must further ask, do such theologians 
differ from the freethinkers? What is the difference 
between their position and that of outspoken unbeliev- 
ers) let us see! . 

The freethinkers, in a statement of their principles, 
published in their most widely read organ, The Truth 
Seeker, give their position as to various points of doctrine. — 
Concerning the existence of God they are silent. They 
do not officially deny His existence; at least, the denial 
of God is not found in the list of doctrines which they 
disown.’* The silence of the freethinkers on this point 
shows that they leave the question open. The same is 
true of their view of immortality. They say expressly: 


—~-——— 


11 The Biblical World, May, 1918, p. 307. 
12 This may be ascribed to the fact that certain modern philos 
sophers and liberal theologians give definitions of God which are 
not aS ae i even to radical unbelievers—atheists. 











FREETHINKERS’ ATTITUDE 239 


“As to the immortality of the soul, we neither affirm nor 
deny; we wait for evidence.” Clearly they are undecid- 
ed on this question, as well as on that of the existence 
of God. This is but a way of saying that they do not ac- 
cept these doctrines. It is apparent, then, that the free- 
thinkers’ position concerning these fundamental doc- 
trines is the same as that of the scientists, historians, so- 
ciologists, etc., who have given a negative answer to Dr. 
Leuba’s questions. 

Now this is also the attitude of the theologians to 
whom the reviewer in the said magazine article refers, 
intimating that they would have given negative answers 
to the questions concerning God and immortality. These 
theologians are representatives of the modern religious 
liberalism, the new theology. They stand for non-doc- 
trinal, undogmatic, non-creedal religion, that is to say, 
for precisely the same sort of religion as is professed by 
the freethinkers according to their own official state- 
ment. The liberalistic theologians, like the freethinkers, 
give their attention foremost (sometimes exclusively) 
to what they speak of as important practical questions 
- meaning problems of moral reform and material improve- 
ment of various description. They overlook the fact 
that such doctrines as that of God and immortality are 
of incomparably greater practical importance than ques- 
tions of improvement and reform, 

The reason why the representatives of the modern 
liberalistic theology take an attitude of comparative in- 
difference toward the most important questions is, be- 
cause they reject the source of our knowledge of these 
things. They deny the inspiration and authority of 
Scripture. Therefore they must confess ignorance as to 
the points of teaching for which the Scriptures are our 
only source of knowledge. They are agnostics on these 
points. (An agnostic is, literally, one who does not 
know.) So it has come to pass that Paul Elmer More 


240 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


can truthfully say concerning our liberalized seminaries: 
“A divinity school is a place where they investigate pov- 
erty and spread agnosticism.” In fact, the new theology 
men in the seminaries often pride themselves on their 
doctrinal agnosticism. They do not claim to have posi- 
tive truth regarding the Christian fundamentals. There- 
fore they do not teach affirmatively on these points. The 
student is supposed to draw his own conclusions, not 
however from Scripture evidence but on other grounds. 
If the student’s opinion should chance to differ from that 
of the professor (assuming that the professor has an 
opinion on the point in question), it matters nothing, 
since both teacher and student are working with mere 
suppositions concerning which they profess to know 
nothing reliable. The most essential doctrines are re- 
duced and reconstructed into non-essential secondary 
suppositions. These professors desire to develop in the 
students a tendency, as William Herbert Hobbs rightly 
says, “to see both sides of every question and actually 
to be proud of never reaching a definite decision as to 
which side was wrong and which right.” All doctrine, 
including the question of the existence of God, is treat- 
ed as a secondary matter. 

But we must not fail to note that though the repre- 
sentatives of the new theology ascribe little importance 
to doctrine, they with one accord reject the old Biblical 
doctrines. They are, after all, quite positive in their neg- 
ative teaching. When they say that questions of doc- 
trine and creed are unimportant matters, their thought 
is not that it matters little whether the student take the 
conservative or liberalistic point of view. On the con- 
trary, they believe it to be an important matter that he 
disowns orthodoxy and accepts Evolutionism and other 
unproven theories which are in harmony with the spirit 
of the age. But so long as the student disclaims the old 
Bible faith he is, as a rule, welcome to his opinion. In 





STUDENTS’ FAITH SHATTERED 241 


other words, there is only one dogma which the repre- 
sentatives of the more advanced religious liberalism ac- 
cept, namely the doctrine of religious agnosticism: that 
there is no positive religious truth. If they believed that they 
had not only negative but also positive truth, they could 
not take an aititude of comparative indifference as to 
doctrinal points in general. 

We have the testimony of liberalistic professors to 
_ the effect that taking a course in a modern college has a 
tendency to dissuade young men from entering the min- 
istry. For an example, Gerald Birney Smith says: 
“Many of the most enterprising and devoted men in our 
colleges deliberately turn away from the Christian min- 
istry because they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, 
that there is no place in the church for the kind of free 
and independent thinking which they have learned [at 
college] to love and to employ constructively.”1% It will 
be recalled, however, that there is a liberalistic wing of 
the church in which there is every opportunity for free 
thought and for unscriptural teaching. May it not be 
that the young men abandon the thought of the ministry 
_because they believe the liberalistic ministry is not worth 
their while? Such is, without question, the case when 
theological students in the modernized seminaries, after 
they have been won for the new theology, decide that 
there are more important things to do than to preach it. 
“The scientific study of theology in a [liberalized] divin- 
ity school has occasionally impelled students to abandon 
the ministry,” said Professor George Burman Foster, of 
the University of Chicago.44 Many who after their ordi- 
nation have accepted liberal views, were honest enough 
to leave the ministry, finding that they have no vital re- 
ligious message. Professor John Alfred Faulkner, of 
Drew Theological Seminary, writes: “I have heard of a 


18 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 349. 
14 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 743. 


242 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


theological school] where the students leave the class- 
rooms in tears because their faith has been shattered or 
insulted or grieved by what their professors have said.” 
Dr. Augustus Hopkins Strong says of the student in the 
liberalistic seminary: 

He has all his early conceptions of Scripture and of Chris- 
tian doctrine weakened, has no longer any positive message to 
deliver, loses the ardor of his love for Christ, and at his gradua- 
tion leaves the seminary, not to become preacher or pastor, as he 
had once hoped, but to sow his doubts broadcast, as teacher in 
some college, as editor of some religious journal, as secretary of 


some Young Men’s Christian Association, or as agent of some 
mutual life insurance company. 


Nor is a man under such circumstances to be blamed 
fer abandoning the ministry. The blame rests on the 
seminary who robbed him of the faith of his childhood, 
and on the church which tolerates such conditions and 
supports such an institution. If the ministry of the Gos- 
pel is the greatest, the noblest calling — as it, considered 
from the Christian viewpoint, truly is—-what about an 
institution which, yielding to the spirit of the age, de- 
prives a minister of his vital Christian message? Is not 
such an institution engaged in a most miserable busi- 
ness? We are told, of course, that a man may accept 
the new theology and yet be a Christian minister; the 
fact is apparent, however, that the liberalistic ministry 
is not an enviable calling. It will be recalled that, while 
the great majority of Unitarian ministers are men who 
formerly held pastorates in evangelical churches and 
have made shipwreck of faith, only forty per cent of for- 
mer evangelical preachers who enter the Unitarian min- 
istry remain in this ministry. Sixty per cent leave it to 
follow some other pursuit. 

Does not a Christian minister who accepts the new 
theology find himself in a dilemma? Modern religious 





15 On the Value af Church History, p. 46. 





ATHEISM UNDER PIOUS PHRASES 243 


liberalism has no answer to the questions that le at the 
foundation of the Christian religion. The new theology 
does not know what to do with sin. It has no message 
of salvation for the despairing sinner. It does not have 
a God who really answers prayer. It stands for agnos- 
ticism regarding the future life. Unless the modernized 
minister has an elastic conscience and has learned the 
art of dissimulation, he has, at the open grave, only 
words of mock comfort such as Robert G. Ingersoll had 
at the grave of his father. God pity the preacher who is 
supposed to have a vital religious message of eternal 
truth, but has in fact only non-essential, secondary, un- 
founded human suppositions to present, while leaving 
his people under the impression that he has something 
similar to the Christian message. Is it any wonder that 
“many of the most enterprising and devoted men turn 
away from the Christian ministry” when they accept the 
new theology? 3 

The question is here pertinent: Could there be a 
more disgusting variety of moral jugglery and intellect- 
ual counterfeiting than the modern liberalistic denial of 
God which comes under misleading theological and phil- 
- osophical phrases? Many of our leading seminaries and 
colleges are guilty of this gravest offence. Professor 
George R. Dodson says rightfully: 

When the liberalistic professors [in the theological semi- 
naries] speak of God, you as honest men naturally suppose they 
mean something objectively real, a being of infinite wisdom and 
goodness, the conscious ground of the moral order, whereas 
they may really refer to their own ideas only. If you questioned 
them narrowly, you would in some cases find them holding a 
pragmatist view of God as nothing more than a successful and 
satsifactory working scheme. 

If this is serious for you, for the young minister it is tragic. 
Scme men may be content to go on using great words which for 
them. do not imply objective realities; but the most clear-sighted 
and noble will be unhappy in thus attempting to lead a double 
life, to pretend and speak as if they believed in what is to them 


244 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


only an idea or postulate or working scheme. They will per- 
ceive in time that their steed is only a stick-horse and that they 
carry what they make believe carries them. They will believe in 
God while they can, but when they are no longer able to do so 
they will realize that no good purpose can be served by disguis- 
ing a practical atheism under theistic phrases. 

It is said that, since we owe so much in various lines 
{> our institutions of higher education, severe criticism 
of them is out of place. Is it not true that they have 
rendered great service to the church and to society in 
general, and should we not be sincerely grateful for it? 
Most certainly. Science, for example, is doing wonders 
in our day. But in so far as science “works,” that is to 
say to the extent that it has been tested by practical ap- 
plication and use, it is not established on the hypothesis 
of evolution nor on any other unscriptural theory, but is 
altogether in harmony with Scripture teaching. As con- 
cerns its real value and usefulness, modern science would 
therefore be the same if all scientists were believers in 
the Scriptures as God’s inspired Word. 

It goes without saying that no one will criticize the 
colleges and universities in so far as they are rendering 
service to the human family. However, the fact cannot 
be ignored that many of these institutions stand for re- 
ligious liberalism and unbelief, and in so far as this is the 
case they do not render service but disservice to society. 
The offence consists in this that, besides the dissemina- 
tion of real learning, they bring destructive religious in- 
fluences to bear upon the student. 

There are those who tell us that our fears are un- 
grounded. We must have faith, they say, in truth’s 
‘power to make its own way and to vanquish error. Our 
apprehension regarding young people in agnostic insti- 
tutions has, we are told, its roots in distrust of truth. 
Such sentences give expression to one of the curiously 


15 The Christian Register, October 2, 1919, p, 151. Italics mine. 





eee ie a 
— Se 


sf a ee eee ae ee 


SHOULD THE TRUTH BE DEFENDED? 245 


perverted ideas of modern liberalism. But what of the 
professors in some of our institutions of higher learning 
who not only make light of the doctrines of the Christian 
faith but of Christian morals as well? Are we expected to 
accept the supposition that wrong ethical teaching and 
perverse moral influences are harmless because of the 
power of truth to vanquish error? Why educate at all 
along those lines, if such be the case? The late Dr. 
William R. Harper, a noted liberalist, once said, “If I 
were a boy again, I would read every book I could 
reach.” He overlooked the fact that a flood of immoral, 
let alone irreligious, literature is on the market in our 
day which is unfit to be read and which has poisoned 
the minds of a host of young people. Does not the Unit- 
ed States government forbid the transmission of immoral 
books through the mails? Is Anthony Comstock to be 
praised or censured for his crusade against morally per- 
nicious literature? 

If the danger to our young people from morally ques- 
tionable literature is real, is there not even greater dan- 
ger for them to sit at the feet of those who profess ag- 
-nosticism in regard to Christian morals? And is there 
not every reason to believe that irreligious teachings and 
influences are every bit as harmful as those of morally 
objectionable nature? Are not the former indeed more 
insidiously dangerous and as a rule more radically de- 
structive than the latter? Yet the fact remains that truth 
will be victorious in the end. Truth will always be truth 
whether you-and I recognize it as such or not. Would 
it not be absurd to suppose that truth will turn into error 
unless we defend it? But while it is true that “truth 
crushed to earth will rise again,” there is grave danger 
that it will not rise for those who crush it. Irreparable 
personal loss necessarily results from the rejection of 
vital truth. 

It is for this reason that truth must be defended and 


246. MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


error opposed. Efforts must be put forth to get men to 
accept the truth. Nothing in humari life is comparable 
in importance with the acceptance of religious truth. 
And in the realm of religion and ethics it is easier to 
yield to error than to that which is true. Even Goethe 
who was not a Christian believer said, men follow error 
for the reason that to do so is easier than to embrace 
truth. To take the course of least resistance and yield 
to the anti-Christian spirit of the age is easier than to 
be loyal to Jesus Christ and fight the good fight of faith. 
It requires more earnest and determined effort to follow 
the truth than to yield to error. For a young person 
who for any length is sitting at the feet of a teacher de- 
fending moral or religious error it is the natural thing to 
become tainted; indeed it is, speaking generally, inev- 
itable. 


There are instances in which young people and par- 
ents have concluded, since courses in the Bible are of- 
fered in some of the colleges, that these institutions must 
be safe. All depends however on the personal position 
of the teacher. Bible study under a teacher who stands 
for liberalism is almost invariably even more objection- 
able than the study of other subjects under such a teach- 
er. Not seldom it is the case that modernistic Bible 
study is of so predominantly critical character that the 
religious side, even from a liberal viewpoint, is lost sight 
of. “Critical courses in the Bible might be anything but 
religious,” says Professor Athearn.*® 

The attendance of colleges which stand for the lib- 
eralistic religious views is unjustifiable. To take such 
a risk is a moral wrong. These schools, by their own 
confession, bend their energies upon destroying the faith 
of childhood. He who discards the old Bible faith suf- 
fers greater loss than all the learning of the schools can 


16 The Church School, p. 257. 





THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF AGNOSTICISM 247 


make good. Young people desiring to devote them- 
selves to the acquisition of higher education should be 
advised to choose a sound institution. Again, if the op- 
portunity to attend such a school be absent, they should 
realize that there are thousands of men and women who 
have never attended college but have acquired a better 
education than the average graduate. It may be worth 
while to notice, in passing, that Dean Frederick S. Jones, 
of Yale University, has recently expressed a sentiment 
in regard to the purpose of a college education which is 
now widely recognized as reasonable: 

There was a time when I thought that we must teach in col- 
lege first and foremost the learning of books. In these days I 
would ‘bend every effort to the making of good citizens, and by 
a good citizen I think I mean a man who is master of himself, 


earns his own living, and as far as possible in doing it is of 
benefit to his fellow men. 


- The question suggests itself: Should not the Christian 
home be equal to such a task? 

If a Christian student cannot consistently attend a 
college that is spreading religious liberalism, what about 
the schools of agnosticism which go by the name theo- 
- logical seminaries and divinity schools? Are they not 
even mightier agencies of evil than the liberalistic col- 
leges? ‘To those who recognize the vast differences, the 
fundamental contrasts between the modern liberalism 
and the old Bible faith —to such it is perfectly clear that 
the modernized theological seminary is in very deed the 
greatest menace, the most formidable foe to the Chris- 
tian faith and to the moral fibre of the nation. The 
spread of agnosticism as to the Christian faith and mor- 
als by the theological seminaries spells disaster to Chris- 
tianity. 

“What is the effect of the new theology methods up- 
on our theological seminaries?” asks Dr, Augustus Hop- 
kins Strong. He answers: 

The effect is to deprive the Gospel message of all definite- 


248 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ness and to make professors and students disseminators of 
doubts. — The theological seminaries of almost all our denomi- 
nations are becoming so infected with this grievous error, that 
they are not so much organs of Christ as they are organs of 
Antichrist.17 

It is said that in one of the leading European coun- 
tries the church, or sections of it, favors the liquor traf- 
fic for the reason that some of the prelates of the church 
are financially interested. What an inconsistency, you 
say. But is it not a greater offence to support an insti- 
tution that stands for the repudiation of the fundament- 
als of the Christian faith and Christian morals? If pat- 
ronage of the liquor traffic 1s a moral wrong, is not the 
support of such an institution (be it as a student or in 
some other way) a so much greater wrong as these in- 
stitutions are a greater menace to Christian faith and 
morality? Is it not impossible to us to effectively com- 
bat this menace so long as we patronize it in any way 
whatever? When we are told that religious liberalism, 
as represented by the said institutions, stands for cred- 
itable ideals we must not lose sight of the fact that irre- 
ligion and atheism are never so dangerous as when they 
come under a cloak of idealism. 

But what is the church to do without the seminaries? 
Does she not need them for the education and training 
of the coming ministers? In the first place the out- 
standing fact is to be recognized that not all seminaries 
are tainted with liberalism. The church owes a great 
debt of gratitude to the faithful men in the sound, con- 
servative seminaries who have not bowed their knees to 
Baal; as well as to the educational boards and commis- 
sions which consistently maintain the proper Scriptural 
attitude. Let students attend such schools. Let them 
never lose sight of the fact that a man is better qualified 
for the Christian ministry if he maintain the faith of his 


WW Tour of the Missions. Observations and Conclusions, p. 189, 





ATTENDANCE AT LIBERALISTIC SCHOOLS 249 


childhood, than if he lose it in the attempt to acquire 
more learning. 

Sometimes it is said that a young man who has an 
experiental knowledge of Christ need not hesitate to at- 
tend a modernized seminary. Cannot God keep him 
sound in the faith? The point in question however is, 
whether it is morally right to go to such an institution. 
If these schools are agencies of evil, it behooves a Chris- 
tian to shun them. If you do that which is morally 
wrong, you have no right to expect that God will keep 
you and bless you in it. Religious liberalism is now in 
the air. It is propagated from pulpits, through papers, 
magazines and countless books. ‘There is danger of be- 
coming tainted without attending schools that have writ- 
ten liberalism on their banners. Unless God does a mir- 
acle — and He is not given to doing miracles for the dis- 
obedient — you will, if you take a course in such a sem- 
inary, come out tainted. You have no right to be a stu- 
dent in an institution that is given to combating the 
faith. Your very attendance at such a school would be 
inconsistent with loyalty to Jesus Christ. 

A further fact to be recognized and which has al- 
ready been touched upon is that training in a higher in- 
stitution of learning is not claimed to be indispensable 
for the ministry of the Word of God. | Looking closely 
into this question we find that in most denominations 
the lion’s share of ministerial work is done by men who 
have never attended a college or seminary. In the Bap- 
tist Church, for example, according to Dr. Henry L. 
Morehouse, only one-eighth of all the white ministers in 
this country have received a college and seminary train- 
ing. In the year 1913 one sixth only of the men ordained 
to the ministry in the Baptist Church had received such 
training.** There is every reason to believe that in the 


18 The Record; Rochester Theological Seminary Bulletin, 
May, 1917, p. 51. 


250 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Methodist Church the percentage of college and semi- 
nary men in the ministry is somewhat similar. Bishop 
Francis J. McConnell, of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, informs us that some of the best pulpits in the 
denomination with which he is connected are filled by 
men that have not taken a seminary course.’® In the 
Free Churches of England there were, in 1909, less than 
10,000 ordained preachers, but above 50,000 so-called 
lay-preachers that were without special training. It is a 
noteworthy fact that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Dwight 
Lyman Moody and many other untitled preachers had 
acquired a better education than many a seminary grad- 
uate. One of the soundly evangelical and most active 
Christian bodies in America, numbering about 7,500 
members and fully supporting about fifty American mis- 
sionaries in foreign countries have among their pastors 
and mission workers not one that has either a college or 
a seminary degree. And there are other Christian bod- 
ies in which prevailing conditions are somewhat similar. 
“Never were the ministries of the Anglican and Free 
Churches better fitted by scholarship and by general at- 
tainment to perform their task,” says Sir Joseph Comp- 
ton-Rickett, and yet, especially in the Free Churches 
“the sermon is mostly ethical, ofttimes literary, but it 
fails to search and grip as in former days.’*° Another 
British writer, George Tyrrell, recalling the great suc- 
cess of the early Methodist preachers, says: “The preach- 
ing of practical Christianity is easily within the capacity 
of simple and practical men. Do we not immensely 
exaggerate the amount of education required in ordinary 
cases ?”’?1 


Does this mean that learning is to be discounted? By 


19 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 328. 
20 The Contemporary Review, May, 1917, p. 630. 
21 The same, May, 1909, p. 586. 





LUTHER AND THE UNIVERSITIES 251 


no means. It does mean that learning is not to be sought 
in institutions which, through their religious attitude, 
plainly are agencies of evil. The disastrous influences 
— religious and moral — proceeding from such institu- 
tions cannot be ignored. And, as already intimated, the 
opinion that unbiblical, irreligious tendencies are the 
necessary sequence of higher education is not for a mo- 
ment to be countenanced. Martin Luther spoke of the 
leading universities of his time as the gates of hell — 
they were the most formidable powers arrayed against 
the Gospel. But not for a moment did Luther entertain 
the thought that the antagonistic attitude of the univer- 
sities was due to their superior learning. He often re- 
fers to the anti-evangelical professors as “the sophists of 
the schools.” By setting himself as a steel-wall against 
the universities he by no means disfavored education. 
Furthermore, though the “sophists” of Luther’s time 
claimed to speak in the name of scholarship and science, 
they, as a rule, changed their position if the university 
with which they were connected chanced to be located 
in a state whose ruler decided to accept the Lutheran 
_ reformation. Obviously they took their orders from 
“the powers that be,’ while they claimed to speak in 
the name of scholarship. In our age there are many who 
advance a similar claim while in fact they take their or- 
ders from the spirit of the time. 

Liberalistic theological professors have openly boast- 
ed that they have it in their power to liberalize the 
church with which they are connected. They think that 
the church cannot do without the seminaries and, after 
the seminaries are liberalized, the church has no way to 
prevent the spread of liberalism within her borders. It 
is true that as the seminaries go, so will the church go, 
but the opinion that the church cannot, if necessity re- 
quires it, exist and prosper without the seminaries is not 
well founded. While it is readily recognized that the 


252 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


sound and safe seminaries are a great aid to the cause 
of Christ, the view that we must have seminaries, even 
if they be liberalized, is unacceptable. . 

We have fallen upon times when it has become the 
fashion for churches to be more concerned about the 
preacher’s correct grammar than his Scriptural sound- 
ness. The lack of spiritual power is a characteristic of 
our time. It cannot be rightfully claimed that such pow- 
er comes through education. The agnostic theological 
seminaries offer striking proof of the undeniable fact 
that higher education and spiritual blindness go only 
too often hand in hand. Professor Philip Schaff said 
once in his parting counsel to one of his classes: “Re- 
member, first of all, the true bearing of theological study 
on your personal character. Scholarship is good, virtue 
is better, holiness is best of all. Your learning and elo- 
quence will do little good in the world unless they are 
quickened by spiritual power.” A Unitarian editor 
writes: “The preachers who hold the greatest number 
of hearers are those who are fairly fanatical, in worldly 
eyes, in the proclamation of a defined and a working 
faithy?’* 

A word remains to be said regarding the Bible 
Schools. The increasing danger arising from the liber- 
alistic tendencies of the colleges makes imperative the 
existence of theological schools which do not require a 
college degree for admission. Furthermore the Bible 
Schools do not depend on the liberalistic colleges and 
universities for competent teachers. The Bible Schools 
are today a bulwark of positive Bible faith. Most of the 
more prominent defenders of the faith are connected 
with these schools. A writer in The Moravian says: 

It is true that I do not agree with the teachings of the Bible 


Schools at every point, nevertheless it is also true that most of 
the criticism and opposition to the Bible Institutes comes from 


22 The Christian Register, March 7, 1918. 





THE BIBLE INSTITUTES 253 


sources inspired by the higher destructive criticism. We can 
most naturally expect this very thing. I would just as soon ex- 
pect these people to say something good about Bible Institutes 
as to expect the owner of a brewery to say something good 
about prohibition. To men who profess to be ambassadors of 
Christ, interpreters and ministers of Christ and His gospel, eat- 
ing the bread of the church, often in the best remunerated posi- 
tions in the gift of the church, and yet argue away the supernat- 
ural origin and power of the gospel in the lives of men, who deny 
the necessity and the fact of regeneration in the heart of the in- 
dividual, substituting for the real gospel of Christ a man-devised 
cultural veneer; to such men the Bible Institutes must be a 
thorn in the flesh as well as in the spirit. 

Opposition to the Bible Schools is, apparently, in- 
creasing in modernist circles. A liberalistic writer has 
referred to them as a “pest”, meaning probably that 
they are, in his opinion, the most formidable impedi- 
ment obstructing the way of modernism. In the Con- 
ference of Theological Seminaries, held in the month of 
August, 1918, at Cambridge, Mass., a speaker referred 
to those “who are now being fearfully ministered to by 
products of Bible Schools,’** and a Unitarian editor says 
in a report of the same convocation: “Throughout the 
. Conference there was a recurrent note that one of the 
chief enemies of an educated ministry is the so-called 
Bible School.”** The question seems here in order: 
would it have been too much to expect of this confer- 
ence to consider the fact that a great many of our semi- 
nary students are being trained in anti-Christian, nat- 
uralistic “theology” and that people are “fearfully min- 
istered to” by some of the products of these seminaries. 
As a proof that this is not an overstatement we quote 
here from a topic card given out recently by the minis- 
ter of a Unitarian church in one of our larger cities, an- 
nouncing a series of addresses. Here we read: 


23 The Biblical World, August, 1916, p. 68. 
24 The Christian Register, August 22, 1918, p. 8. 
25 The same, p. 5 


254 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


The old religion, based upon supernatural and divine rev- 
elations, is being supplanted by a religion based upon the natural 
and human relations. The old moral sanctions are giving way 
and new sanctions must be put in their place. The old faith in di- 
vine providence is toppling and reeling, and a new faith in hu- 
man providence is slowly risitg in strength and power.26 

Ts it not a significant fact that in a Conference of 
Theological Seminaries a recurrent note of censure of 
the Bible Schools is heard while, according to published 
reports, the fact that religious naturalism and atheism 
is spread by the seminaries is never touched upon? 


It is pleasant to notice that there is at least one writ- 
er who, though he has accepted liberalistic views, has 
retained something of his former opinion of the Bible 
Schools. Clarence J. Harris writes in The Christian Reg- 
ister*” about Dr. James M. Gray, President of the Moody 
Bible Institute in Chicago: “Whatever may be the the- 
ological narrowness of such a man, one thing is certain, 
the several courses of Bible study under Dr. Gray did 
more for the writer as a minister than all the theology 
meted out in two seminaries.” What a pity that the 
writer of these words stands no longer for the old truth. 
Presumably he yielded to liberalism under seminary in- 
fluences, yet, in the same article he deplores the cold- 
ness and lack of power in the Unitarian Church. — Ey- 
ery lover of the Bible as God’s Word, every believer in 
the primitive Christian message should be interested in 
the Bible Schools, as well as in the Seminaries which 
unswervingly stand for the Christian truth. 


26 The Christian Register, February 26, 1920, p. 22. 
27 The same, April 11, 1918. 





XXIV 


THE IMMORALITY OF THEOLOGICAL COUN- 
TERFEITING AND CAMOUFLAGE 


\ 

HEN counterfeiting is mentioned in connection 
W with the new theology, there are always those 

who are ready to talk of unfairness and partial- 
ity. It may be in order, therefore, to give the word, at 
the outset, to new theology men who frankly admit 
that liberalistic theologians have indulged in word-jug- 
glery and camouflage. Before hearing the testimony of 
men who represent the religious liberalism, it may be 
well to recall that Ritschl, the father of the new theolo- 
gy, defended the principle that it is right and proper, in 
order to allay the fears of the conservatives, to express 
the new theological opinions in the old familiar words. 
In Ritschl’s theology certain doctrines are substantially 
‘ modified or radically changed, but the changed doctrines 
come in the expressions and phrases of the old theology ; 
new meanings are ascribed to the old words. This 
means that, though the new theology differs radically 
from the old, it is given an orthodox appearance. It is 
presented under the guise of the familiar vocabulary of 
orthodoxy. Ever since the days of Albrecht Ritschl has 
theological counterfeiting been in fashion among mod- 
ernists. 


In recent years not a few representatives of the new 
theology have freely confessed that camouflage and 
counterfeiting, as indulged in by modern theologians, is 
unjustifiable. President McGiffert says, for example: 
“Thanks to our careless thinking, to our elastic con- 


256 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


sciences, we still profess to believe these doctrines,” 
namely doctrines of Biblical Christianity.1 Professor 
Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, 
points out that the presentation of certain new theology 
views “is practically certain to abound in skillfully de- 
vised ambiguities which obscure rather than reveal the 
actual content of the theologian’s thought. But if once 
the spirit of intellectual juggling be admitted into any 
procedure, it is no longer possible to claim moral su- 
periority for it. The New Testament itself reminds us 
that the ‘double-minded man is unstable in all his 
ways. ’? This author says further: 

If there be allowed a spirit of ingenious juggling by which 
the newer [theological] science is made to yield something re- 
sembling the older conclusions, the sense of honor is inevitably 
dulled? The subtle temptation to “harmonize” contradictory 
elements by clever analogies, so that new meaning may be read 
into old words and the semblance of an unchanging theology 
may be retained, is all too frequently yielded to.4 New mean- 
ings are thus smuggled in under familiar labels.5 Modern 
books on theology frequently indulge in clever rhetorical state- 
ments which serve, indeed, to allay the fears of conservative 
Christians, but which fail to meet the demands of earnest and ex- 
act thinking. Such adjustment of statements are likely to in- 
volve a failure to be thoroughly loyal either to Scripture or to 
the demands of criticism. And when stern loyalty is relaxed, 
the door to timeserving is wide open.® 

Quite right, representatives of new theology views 
may, by intellectual juggling, disperse the fears of con- 
servative Christians and persuade them of the sound- 
ness of liberalistic teachings. Too often they are suc- 
cessful in such endeavors. For, is not the pious lan- 
guage of Scripture used in the presentation of these 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1911, p. 235. 

2 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology, p. 179. 

3 The same, p. 181. 

4 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 606. 

5 A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 489. 
6 The same, p. 490. 





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4 


IMMORALITY OF CLERICAL POSITION 257. 


views’? Does not the coin which is offered bear the 
proper superscription and symbol? What matters it to 
the modern conscience that the content and fabric is 
different from the genuine article? — But such counter- 
feiting is nothing less than deception — pious deception 
perchance. From the viewpoint of morality and com- 
mon honesty it is altogether inexcusable. A British 
writer says on this point, after criticizing the liberal 
churchmen for the practice of answering questions con- 
cerning the creed in the affirmative, when they actually 
disbelieve the statements: “What a pass have we come 
to! Here are leaders of the Church —an institution one 
of whose main objects is the propagation of truth — 
here are our spiritual pastors and masters actually as- 
serting that it is justifiable to assert your belief in state- 
ments which you do not believe.”7 John Morley, in his 
book On Compromise, wrote: “The first advance towards 
either the renovation of one faith or the growth of an- 
other, must be the abandonment of those habits of hyp- 
ocritical conformity and compliance which have filled 
the air of England of today with gross and obscuring 
‘ mists.” Dr, James Martineau said: “IJ am persuaded 
that honorable laymen, themselves of [liberalistic] 
Broad Church sympathies, are more awake than is com- 
monly supposed to the essential immorality of the liberal 
clerical position.’® 

A Unitarian writer says: “I have an old friend, a 
clergyman of another church, who recites his creed with 
his congregation every Sunday. He tells me the distress 
it is to him that it is not his creed. That old friend of 
mine is trying to do his duty under fearfully difficult 
conditions. And they cost him his self-respect.”® When 
Dr. Hugh R. Orr, of Pittsburgh, severed his connection 


7 The Hibbert Journal, No. 47, p. 675. 
8 The same, No. 46, p. 333. 
9 The Christian Register, February 20, 1919, p. 13. 


258 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


with the Methodist Episcopal Church, to unite with the 
Unitarians, Bishop J. F. Berry made the remark in pub- 
lic that “it would be far better if many ministers who 
are preaching the Unitarian doctrine in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church would be as honest as Dr, Orr.” “The 
Unitarian Church is open to these men; why, then, sail 
under false colors?” asks The Presbyterian; “Why not 
be honest? Why not have the courage of their convic- 
tion?’ Zion's Advocate said a few years ago: 


When men surrender their faith in the supernatural and in 
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian Church, and can no 
longer preach and teach them, why do they not, like honorable 
gentlemen, resign the responsibilities which they have accepted, 
and go out and establish a platform of their own? If they have 
the truth, why do they not show their confidence in their teach- 
ings by organizing their own institutions instead of continuing 
to receive their support from those whose beliefs they have sol- 
emnly promised to espouse? I think that common honor and 
honesty would lead them to such a step.1° 


An expression on the point in question by Henry 
Neumann, of the Ethical Culture Society, Brooklyn, is 
noteworthy. He writes: 


At least the fundamentalists are consistent. They do not 
believe in one thing and say another. Words do indeed change 
their meaning. The term “Americanism” to-day does not mean 
exactly what Americanism meant a hundred years ago. But if 
I say it is “Americanism” to give my chief loyalty to London 
or Paris or Rome or Moscow, surely I had better find some 
other wort to indicate a change so great from the earlier mean- 
ing. If the logic of modernism is sound, and if you can keep 


the old names no matter what new meanings you read into 


them, Luther ought to have continued to call himself a Roman 
Catholic, Unitarians ought to have called themselves Trinitarians, 
and all Christians ought to continue to call themselves Jews. 
The difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is not 
greater than the difference between fundamentalism and mod- 


ernism. I honor the desire of the fundamentalists that preach- 
~— 


10 The Bible Champion, 1916, p. 130. 


eo a a — oe 





DODGING THE ISSUES 259 


ers in their denominations mean what they say and say what 
they mean.11 . 

Another representative of the Ethical Culture move- 
ment, H. J. Bridges, of Chicago, writes: 

The question of intellectual honesty in church and pulpit 
has hitherto been utterly ignored by the mass of the public. A 
distinguished teacher in the Divinity School of a great universi- 
ty recently gave one of the cleverest exhibitions of the art of 
riding two horses at once that I ever witnessed. At a confer- 
‘ ence of liberals he witnessed. At a conference of liberals he ex- 
pressed his own views about God, Christ, the Bible, and the 
church in language of masterly vagueness and ambiguity. 

There is nothing more repellant than the preacher who pri- 
vately admits that he doesn’t believe what he publicly utters. It 
is simply a question of common honesty and truthfulness in the 
pulpit. Nothing could conceivably be more demoralizing than 
this game of sanctified make-believe. None of the things that 
preachc-s generally denounce, and not all of them together are 
so profoundly corrupting, so ruinous to the very principles and 
standards of moral integrity as that which must be plainly called 
religious lying—preaching doctrine that the preacher himself 
thinks false. It is humbugging the naive and unwary for the 
glory of God and the security of your own income and social 
position. 


Here is what the editor of the Boston Herald says in 
a recent issue about the dishonest attitude of modern- 
ists in general: 


From the beginning the overwhelming majority of liberals 
in the orthodox churches have dodged the issues — have hedg- 
ed, evaded, qualified and compromised. They have comforted 
their congregations with assurances that nothing was really hap- 
pening in the world of religious thought, and that they need not 
therefore be disturbed. Black they have blithely called white, 
and error truth. For one man in the liberal camp who has the 
courage of his conviction, there are a thousand, like Harry Em- 
erson Fosdick, who shift and shuffle on every question. Now 
come the fundamentalists to demand a “show-down.” They 
make their position clear and they ask that their opponents do 
as much! ; 


11 The Christian Register, March 13, 1924, p. 245. 


260 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


A prominent Unitarian writer, Edmund H. Reeman, 
Says: f 

If the modernist means anything, he means, we take it, that 
he does not accept the Bible as the infallible and authoritative 
word of God. He means that his. God and the God of the fun- 
damentalist are as different as chalk and cheese. He means that 
he does not believe that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, 
nor that His dead body was raised from a Palestinian tomb, nor 
that this same Christ shall ever come again in triumph from the 
cloud. 

Why, then, does he not say so in terms as unequivocal, as 


simple, and as straightforward as the fundamentalist uses? Why — 


does he not openly ard frankly state that, if fundamentalism is 
true Christianity, then he is not a Christian and has no use for 
Christianity ?12 

It is seen, then, that there are modernists who con- 
fess to the inexcusableness of the practice of presenting 
the modern liberalism under an orthodox cloak. These 
men are of the more radical liberalistic school. and make 
no secret of their denial of the Christian fundamentals. 
But the question is here in order, Is not the position of 
the more radical religious liberalists even more vulner- 
able and inexcusable than that of the more moderate 
school? Is it anything less than counterfeiting and 


camouflage when the more outspoken modernists up- 


hold a mere semblance of theology, though by their own 
confession their theology is an entirely secondary mat- 
ter? Some of the liberalists have discarded every trace 


of the Christian faith and theology but continue to lay 


claim to the Christian and religious name. 

A noteworthy instance of this kind is brought to our 
attention by the book The New Orthodoxy, published by 
The University of Chicago Press. The author is Pro- 
fessor Edward Scribner Ames, of the University of Chi- 
cago, who is also an ordained minister in an evangelical 
church. Now, you would suppose a book on orthodoxy 


12 Unity, January 24, 1924. 


3a 
a —— 





RELIGIOUS ATHEISM 261 


to treat on such themes as God and His holiness, sin 
and its wretchedness, the way of salvation, the immor- 
tality of the soul, etc. But this book on The New Ortho- 
doxy, simply ignores these things. The author mentions 
God a few times but conceives Him (as a liberalistic re- 
viewer has rightly said) as “only a kind of symbol for 
the vital spark.” Personality is ascribed to Him in the 
sense as it is sometimes ascribed to a city or a college. 
Worhip is held to be beneath the dignity of modern man. 
The reviewer already mentioned points out that “Mr. 
Ames is not much excited about theology. He seems, 
indeed, to regard theology as rather in a class with as- 
trology,” or, in other words, as superstition.1* Notwith- 
standing all this, this book is given to the world. under 
the title of The New Orthodoxy —a striking instance of 
liberalistic camouflage. The Biblical World is authority 
for the statement that the attitude to religion taken by 
Professor Ames “is so widely prevalent in our day as to 
be characteristic of it.’’** 


A similar instance is that of the book, The Next Step 
in Religion, by Professor Sellars, of the University of 
_ Michigan. This book is even more outspoken in its 
frank denial of God, eternity and all that is supernatural ; 
it is in fact, a defence of rank infidelity. Nevertheless it 
comes under the cloak of religion. The author says: “Is 
it justifiable to retain the term religion when its ancient 
setting has been so completely discarded [by the author 
himself]? I have myself asked this question many a 
time. For many. years I felt that it would be better to 
give up the word entirely as indissolubly bound up with 
those ideas and beliefs which the modern trained mind 
is outgrowing.’’5 He says, he has finally decided to re- 


13 The New Republic, May 10, 1919. 
14 The Biblical World, January, 1919, p. 84. 
15 The Next Step in Religion, p. 221. 


262 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


tain the term, but demands that “we must be firm in 
our negations of the old views.” “If religion is to sur- 
vive,” this author thinks, “it must be human and social. 


It is they who insist upon a supernatural foundation and 
object who are its enemies.’*® True, the defenders of a> 


supernatural religion, such as were Christ and the apos- 
tles and the Christian leaders of all periods, are the en- 
emies of the sort of thing for which this author stands. 
What offends us in particular is that this atheistic, ma- 
terialistic thing comes under a religious cloak and pre- 
tends to be a substitute for and improvement on the 
Christian religion. A reviewer of this book in so radi- 
cally liberalistic a paper as Unity, says, it is neither honest 
nor useful for one holding such a viewpoint to lay claim 
to the name of religion, “but,” this reviewer adds, the use 
of words in a sense totally different [from their real sense] 
1s a part of the obscurantism now pela} [in modernist 
circles ].”2" 

It is generally admitted, as has been pointed out 
elsewhere, that the differences between the old and the 
new theology are of a vital nature and that the new the- 
ology is the result of a radical revolution. Is it not 
strange, therefore, that the attempt is made to carry 
water on both shoulders and claim adherence to the old 
as well as the new theological views or, as is now often 
the case, to openly deny the faith but retain the religious 
and Christian name? Many have surrendered to mod- 
ernism and yet undertake to convince the conservatives 
that such is not the case. Or they, while frankly reject- 
ing the Biblical theology and the old Christian faith, in- 
sist on retaining the Christian name. The case in the 
first instance is much the same as if a statesman who 
has stood for a given platform discarded its “planks” 
but not its mame, and endeavored to make ‘his old friends 


16 The same, p. 225. 
17 July 3, 1919. Italics not in original. 


eats ee ie ol ne soe Eee Te LS es eee ee ee a | Se ee 


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COMMON HONESTY NEEDED 263 


believe that he is loyal to the old party, while to those 
who accept the new platform he freely admits that he 
does no longer hold his former views. Should not his 
new friends, in their own interest censure such duplici- 
ty? 

One of the great causes of the general moral decline 
of our time is without question the general timeserving, 
dissimulating, dishonest attitude of modernists as con- 
cerns the greatest religious questions. A recent writer 
Says on this point: 

A man cannot profess one thing with his lips and believe an- 
other thing in his heart without suffering some loss of moral 
values, no matter what interpretation he may place upon his 
words. Inconsistency in religion does not end there. Nothing 
is more responsible for a growing loss of moral values than the 
kind of intellectual deceit that is so often practiced in churches. 
We talk about chicanery in politics and about subtlety in busi- 
ness, but they are well matched in many of our professions of 
religion; and if they sought sanction, it could be readily found 
in the practices of many ecclesiastical institutions. 

Professor Herman Mulert, of Leipzig University, 
wrote: “Nothing can more deeply injure Protestant 
Christianity than the suspicion that the minister does 
net speak out freely his deepest conviction,’'* in other 
words, that he pretends to be orthodox when such is not 
the case. “Strange it is that the liberal clergymen can- 
not see the injury they are causing both to religion and 
to their church by these methods,” says a British writ- 
er, referring to the practice of professing an evangelical 
doctrine which one does not believe. “Laymen who think 
and are honest are fast deserting the church, and, what 
is perhaps more serious, young men who think and are 
honest find it impossible to enroll themselves as her 
ministers.”?® It is interesting in this connection to no- 
tice that from England comes the message of a great 


18 The American Journal of Theolegy, 1912, p. 311. 
19 The Hibbert Journal, April, 1914, p. 676. 


264 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


dearth of ministers. In the Church of England for the 
last six years the average number of ordinations has been 
287 while the average annual loss to the ministry by 
death and retirements is about 700. The total number 
of clergy under 35 years is estimated at very little over 
1,000, and observers state that unless there is an enor- 
mous increase in ordinations in the next few years it 
will be impossible to maintain the parochial system, as 
it has been known in England. It will be recalled that 
modernism has taken possession of all the theological 
seminaries of this church. The liberal ministry does 
not attract thinking young men, as the Unitarians and 
other liberal churches of America have learned to their 
sorrow. | 

A most discouraging “sign of our time” is the prev- 
alence of the practice of “hedging” among theological 
writers and professors. Men of high position in the 
church are playing fast and loose with words, they have 
no scruples against making a statement of their faith 
with mental reservations; they are trifling with the 
Christian religion and morality. It is all so different 
from the transparent candor with which the believers 
of all ages have stated their faith; it is even different 
from the method of scientists who would deem it be- 
neath their moral dignity to stoop to such more than 
quest.cnable practices. In modern theology “hedging” 
and camouflage has been developed into a fine art. The 
writer has in mind a book on prayer whose author is a 
pronounced liberalist. Though he does not believe in a 
God who answers prayer, but holds that the effect of 
prayer is entirely subjective, he has “hedged” to such 
extent and with such success that many a believing 
Christian has read his book, never suspecting that the 
author speaks of prayer in an entirely new sense and 
that the book is quite acceptable to radical liberalists. 
Many theological books are published in our day which 





PRACTICE OF HEDGING 265 


the trained reader will recognize as unorthodox, but 
their authors are given to the practice of “hedging.” 
They do not commit themselves. And again there are 
authors who are clearly liberalistic but it is impossible 
to determine their own position as to the points on 
which they write. They may speak or such fundament- 
al doctrines as the deity of Christ, the Incarnation, Atone- 
ment, and the inspiration of Scripture. The reader is 
fully aware that they do not defend orthodoxy but fails 
to find an answer to the question what sort of “doxy” 
they stand for, or what they mean when they treat of 
the said doctrines. None other than Dean Fenn, of Har- 
vard University, says that readers of current theological 
literature must often wish that every writer were obliged 
to furnish a glossary, explaining the meaning of the 
terms which he uses.” He adds that theological writers 
can hardly expect a sympathetic hearing from thought- 
ful men unless they are willing to let them know what 
they are talking about. The supreme need of modern 
liberalism, Dean Fenn says further, is for definite and 
precise thinking and direct, plain speaking. 

The unvarnished fact is that a large number of the- 
’ ological books has been published concerning which it 
must be said, that it is impossible for the readers to 
know what the authors are talking about. And those 
for whom these unreal, non-committal books were writ- 
ten are men and women who, in their own opinion, are 
too far advanced in mental development to accept the 
doctrines of the Christian faith. Could there be more 
convincing proof of the superficiality of modern liberal- 
istic thought? Yet it is to the very characteristic of 
hedging that some of the most widely used theological 
books owe their popularity. A British reviewer of the 
Theology by William Newton Clarke says: “In America 





20 The American Journal of Theology, 1913, p. 518. 


266 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


the fashion seems to be to defend a foregone conclusion 
by rhetoric. This makes the reviewing of the book be- 
fore us a peculiarly difficult task. It contains a great 
deal of what is known as ‘hedging.’ ’’?! 


From the viewpoint of general morality and common 
honesty theological hedging and camouflage must be 
unconditionally condemned. Such practices are un- 
worthy of persons of serious purpose. A man writing 
a book on theology who is unwilling to commit himself 
and to let his readers know what he is talking about is 
clearly a double-minded man—a sorry figure morally. 
It will be recalled that our Lord unscathingly censured 
the Pharisees and referred to them as blind leaders of 
the blind. The greatest of the Pharisees, Saul of Tarsus, 
testifies of himself after his conversion that his Pharisee- 
ism was due to blindness. On the other hand, the mod- 
ern theological hedgers who, having not sufficient faith 
in their faith to confess it, refuse to commit themselves 
on the greatest religious questions, are purposing in 
their heart, as it were, to let “the blind” go on ‘in their 
way. They do not offer them light as they conceive of 
it. They write books on theology, yet their great care 
is, not to commit themselves on the points in question, 
but to hide their own position — if they have a position 
to hide. Some of them boast that they are not so con- 
ceited as to think they have any knowledge about the 
deep religious questions. 


The practice of using words and phrases in a new 
and unreal sense which greatly modifies or annuls the 
real sense, and refusing to reveal what meaning is put 
into these words; such a practice would not be tolerated 
for a moment in any other line of study. It is a char- 
acteristic feature of modern theology, a sad comment on 


21 The Hibbert Journal, vol. VIII, p. 210. 








hihi See gigi ial tere ai FN 


Sten RR i PS xs 


2 
! 


TREACHEROUS ATTACKS 267 


modern religious conditions, a striking testimony to the 
shallowness of the spirit of the age. 

A further evidence of an unsound moral attitude is 
found in the fact that some of the modernized seminaries 
not only stand for “counterfeiting” and “hedging” but 
they do so against the express will of the churches who 
own and support the seminaries. Without scruple, as 
it seems, the new theology men, though they admit that 
their teaching differs radically from the old faith, are oc- 
cupying property and using money designed to the main- . 
tenance and propagation of the primitive Bible faith. 
It will be recalled that the Unitarians were successful 
in the attempt to appropriate to themselves many church 
houses and other church property of evangelical congre- 
gations. In a similar manner liberalism has captured 
seminaries of orthodox Christian bodies. Mission mon- 
ey given by consecrated Christians for the propagation 
of the Gospel is used by liberalists for the purpose of 
modernizing the Christian converts from heathenism. 
All this is morally quite indefensible. 

On the occasion of the publication of Professor 
George Burman Foster’s principal work a Chicago daily 
newspaper made the following editorial comment on the 
situation in the Divinity School of the University of 
Chicago: 

We are struck, also, with the hypocrisy and treachery of 
these attacks on Christianity. This is a free country and a free 
age, and men can say what they choose about religion, but this 
is not what we arraign these divinity professors for. They are 
to be criticized on other grounds. 

Is there no place in which to assail Christianity but a divin- 
ity school? Is there no one to write infidel books except the 
professors of Christian theology? Is a theological seminary an 
appropriate place for a general massacre of Christian doctrine? 
Mr. Mangasarian delivers infidel lectures every Sunday in Or- 
chestra Hall and no one is shocked, but when professional de- 
fenders of Christianity jump on it and assassinate it, the public 
—even the agnostic public—cannot but despise them. 


268 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


If the expression of these infidel sentiments by Christian 
teachers makes a marked and saddening impression on mature 
minds, how must it affect the young people in attendance at the 
university? These young people are not contaminated by the 
teachers of Spiritualism, Theosophy and free thought who abound 
in Chicago but when the very men whom they regard as 
pillars of the faith bend under them like a broken reed it is in- 
evitable that they will leave the university confirmed infidels. 
Even so, we are not championing either Christianity or infidel- 
ity, but only condemning infidels masquerading as men of God 
and Christian teachers. 

A remarkable fact deserves to be noticed here, name- 
ly that some of those who do not seem to be offended 
by the counterfeiting and camouflage of liberalism, in- 
sist that the old Bible faith is selfish and immoral. Dr. 
Herbert Alden Youtz, of Oberlin Seminary, says, for 
example: “Surely the time has come to insist that illib- 
eralism and conservatism are immoral and. unspiritual 
in a world of progress.”?? President A. C.. McGiffert 
thinks “religion must eschew altogether its egoistic and 
otherworldly character. There can be no compromise on 
this point.— The religion of democracy must cease to 
minister to selfishness by promising personal salvation 
and must cease to impede human progress by turning 
the attention of religious men from conditions here to 
rewards elsewhere.’**? Could it be, then, that our Lord 
and His apostles, by administering to the spiritual needs 
of men and showing them the way of personal salva- 
tion, ied them in a selfish, immoral way? Or is, on the 
contrary, the denunciation of personal salvation a cause 
for the present general moral decline? 

It is interesting to notice, in this connection, that 
the new theology rejects also the Biblical doctrine of 
the Atonement as immoral. It is immoral, they say, that 
a judge sentence one person to bear another’s sins. That 





oa 
= erg 


22 Democratizing Theology, p. 13. 
23 Religious Education, June, 1919, p. 160. Italics mine. 





MODERNIST PERVERSION 269 


this is said in connection with the Atonement is due to 
a strange perversion of this Bible doctrine. The fact is 
that no one was compelled to suffer for another’s sin. 
God Himself became man in order that He might, of 
His own free will, bear the sin of the world. Christ is 
God. He became man and acted in accordance with the 
Father’s will when He became the sin-bearer of the 
world. The Father, according to the eternal plan of 
love “laid upon Him the iniquity of us all,” but He did 
so in accordance with the Son’s own free will and plan. 
And mark well, the purpose of it all was to do a won- 
derful work of grace for those who accept the great 
sacrifice, namely to put away their sin and effect in them 
a miraculous change of heart, that henceforth they will 
not serve sin. To say that this greatest of all divine 
plans and works is of an immoral character, is to take 
what you want, for want of a more appropriate name, may 
bt fitly called a satanic view of the Atonement. It is very 
peculiar (is it not?) that men who defend theological 
counterfeiting and similar modern practices make the 
astonishing assertion that they consider the Biblical 
doctrine of the Atonement immoral. Their conscience 
will not permit them, they say, to accept what is in 
truth the greatest and most wonderful deed of a holy 
God. Here, if anywhere, the words of Paul, Rom. 1:22, 
are applicable. 


XXV \ 


MODERN THEOLOGY IN THE LIGHT OF THE 
WORLD WAR 


casionally to “our bewildered and discouraged re- 

ligious life.”? Need it be repeated that general re- 
ligious bewilderment has followed in the wake of the 
modern denial of Scripture authority? The confusion 
obtaining in liberalistic circles has been greatly aggra- 
vated by the world war. The fact is that the great war 
has clearly shown the unreality of the foundations of re- 
ligious liberalism. As early as in the second year of the 
war it was predicted by liberalists that the internation- 
al conflict would probably result in a loss to religious 
liberalism. Dr. L. P. Jacks, the editor of The Hibbert 
Journal and a Unitarian leader of Great Britain, having 
pointed out that religion is interpreted by the old theol- 
ogy in terms of salvation, and by modern theology in 
terms of moral excellence, said concerning the world war: 


P esonaity « George Burman Foster referred oc- 


It is possible that humanity may emerge from this conflict 
not proud of its achievements but thoroughly ashamed of itself. 
—In which event, all those forms of thought which rest on the 
postulates of moral excellence will receive a set-back, and men 
will fling themselves....on the grace and mercy of God. That 
will be good for the theology of salvation,— Man, meanwhile, is 
neither as wise nor as good as he thought he was. A damaging 
blow has been dealt at the reputation of human nature; man’s 
self-respect is for the moment lowered.2 — It is probable that the 
theology which interprets religion as the pursuit of moral ex- 


1A Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 749. 
* The Hibbert Journal, October, 1915, p. 12. 





“LIBERALISM WAS TOO OPTIMISTIC” 271 


cellence will remaim below the horizon for some time to come. 
— Who, then, can doubt that if the pursuit of moral excellence 


[or, in other words, the modern religious liberalism], is to turn 
out a success, man will have to do much better in the future than 
he has ever done in the past?4 


In the opinion of Professor John Wright Buckham 
who represents the more advanced liberalistic school, 
the war has shown “with especial vividness” that liber- 


alism “was too optimistic.”® A Unitarian editor says: 
“Another mistake that Unitarians are liable to is making re- 
ligion too easy. We Unitarians are temperamentally optimists. 
We believe in human nature and in the progress of humanity. 
We have too easily assumed that evolution is an irresistible force 
impelling men upward whether they will or no [in other words, 
that religion is really a secondary matter in “our splendid cosmic 
climb’ ]. Such inevitable moral advance can no longer be asserted. 
Here is a great part of the world back in barbarism again, back 
to primitive brutalities, fears, hates, and horrors. No languid 
optimism is preachable in such a time as this. — Religion admin- 
istered in sugar-coated pills will not cure a mad world.6 


Again the same writer says: 

Five years ago our favorite phrases were, “The parliament 
of man, the federation of the world [in other words, the brother- 
hood of man].” With ghastly surprise we woke from “our dream 
- of peace,” to such savagery and turmoil as the world had never 
known.— What shall the end of these things be? Must the 
slumbering passions of unregenerate humanity lie forever con- 
cealed beneath a deceptive peace? Does human nature hold, as a 
permanent source of danger, selfish and cruel lusts that may at 
any time turn a peaceful landscape into a battlefield ?? 

A writer in the leading liberal church paper of Ger- 
many Says: 

We now know that our task is not the removal of some ex- 


3 The same, p. 14. Our author adds a proviso: “Unless human- 
ity redeems its Character by some great act of atonement, as it con- 
ceivably may.’ The editorial article in the same Journal, of 
October, 1919, shows that Dr. Jacks is disappointed in his hope 
for such a thing. 

4 The same, p. 13. 

5 Progressive Religious Thought in America, p. 315. 

6 The Christian Register, May 9, 1918. 

7 The same, March 7, 1918. 


272 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ternal imperfections on the body of humanity. No longer can 


we misconceive the real matter-of-fact state in all its serious- 
ness, nor indulge in the credulous optimism which assumes that, 
according to the law of evolution, humanity is gradually advanc- 
ing and that evil can be eliminated by a system of prudent, prac- 
tical, liberalistic, social reforms in business, state and church. 
What help is there in merely external remedies for a body that 
is suffering from an internal malady?8 


Professor Emil Pfennigsdorf, of the Univessiiye of 
Bonn, Germany, writes: 


The optimism with which we expected all salvation for hu- 
manity, as well as for the individual, to come from modern im- 
provement and development, has proved a failure. This 1s the 
significance of the world war. The powers [of darkness] which 
are present in the human family, have through the war come to 
light, have done their work and have gathered strength. The 
naive trust in the human spirit, which was supposed to possess 
redemptive power for the individual as well as for humanity, has 
through the war been shaken in its foundation and made unten- 
able. We can no longer defend the view that the divine may be 
sufficiently found in our own consciousness. God has again be- 
come the Holy, the Mysterious, the Incomprehensible One, the 
Lord of the World, before whom humanity is “as a drop in a 
bucket.” In the face of the international darkness and the deep 
tragic of recent ‘history, the Idealist will find himself compelled 
to reckon with the thought that a real revelation of God is need- 
ed to enable man to find Him and to obtain life through Him. 
Clearly irrationality and moral corruption have possession of the 
human being in such degree that the sufficiency of human thought 
can be no longer asserted. What is needed is a revelation of 
God which has actually taken place in history and which will 
with convicting power seize the human soul in its depth® 


Dr. Frederick Lynch, one of the delegates to the 
first World Conference of the Churches for Internation- 
al Peace, who was in Europe on the eve of the great 
war and witnessed the first outbreak of it, testifies that 
he has changed his former views of the nature of man 
and of the supposed need of an “easy faith.” He wrote: 


8 Christliche Welt, March 11, 1920. 
9 Persoenlichkeit, seventh edition, p. 30 seq. 





‘ 


eee ee ed. = ngs ee ee 





FAILURE OF NEW THEOLOGY 273 


Another thing which we think every American of the fifty 
who got this frst sight of war has come to feel is that our relig- 
ion has broken down in its psychology, that our [liberalized] 
Gospel has been addressed to a man who does not exist, that 
our sermons have been preached to an imaginary man. We have 
been preaching to men as highly respectable, on the whole good, 
some of them saintly, while as a matter of fact this has been 
only seeming. They have seemed this because great tempta- 
tions have not roused them from their sleep. No one who came 
across Europe within the last month can ever hold this easy 
faith again. Men are beasts; cruel, lustful, revengeful, ravening, 
just as the Gospel represents them. There are exceptions, but 
in most of us the beast lies just below the surface, and nothing 
but a regeneration which shall sweep through men’s souls as a 
wind from heaven can make them clean.19 


Dr. Richard Roberts, of the Church of the Pilgrims, 
Brooklyn, writes: 


On the whole things were going on very well indeed. The 
old chariot of progress was forging its way bravely up the hill 
and presently we should arrive. Just where we were going to 
arrive did not seem very clear. That, however, did not matter. 
Wherever it was, we were getting there. And now the chariot 
has been suddenly and awfully pitched over a precipice and we 
are writhing at its foot in blood and tears. We had said compla- 
cently that the “ape and tiger” were at the point of death; be- 
hold they have turned upon us and are rending us to pieces. 
The moral tragedy of the world is being enacted in a muddy, 
bloody horror before our eyes, and our little fantastic dreams of 
progress are looking very futile and cheap over against this vast 
catastrophe. This war is the greatest revelation of the moral 
perversity of man since Calvary. The one thing we cannot do 
after this is to belittle sin or explain it away.11 The history 
which has culminated in the present catastrophe vindicates be- 
yond a peradventure the New Testament diagnosis of our human 
distemper, and it leaves us no room for hope save in the New 
Testament remedy. In the place of the futilities of a genial cul- 
ture gospel we must bring to the world again the power and the 
hope of a conversion gospel.12 


10 Quoted in The Sunday School Times of August 21, 1920. 
11 The Biblical World, November, 1918, p. 281. 
12 The same, p. 286. 


274 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


These confessions of liberalistic writers are of great 
significance. They show that the world war has, in the 
opinion of these writers, proved the erroneousness of 
the most fundamental teachings of religious liberalism; 
in other words, they are confessions to the bankruptcy 
of modern theology. The great war is unanswerable 
proof that, despite the belief in man’s natural goodness 
and in the world as God’s kingdom; despite the “genial 
culture gospel” of social and moral improvement, of ed- 
ucation and material advancement, the nature of the 
world has not changed. The world is, in the final anal- 
ysis, as antagonistic to true Christianity as it ever was. 
The advance of civilization has given the world a pleas- 
ing veneer, but has not changed its heart. Laiberalistic 
leaders now confess openly, as we have seen, that, in 
the light of the great war, their own gospel of moral and 
social advancement is not adequate to the great need of 
the human heart and of the world. Some of them admit 
now that a supernatural revelation of God is needed and 
that no other remedy for human sin will suffice than the 
New Testament remedy: a divine work of grace in the 
human heart. 

Now liberalism does not have these things to offer. 
To say that they are needed is to confess that modern 
theology is fundamentally erroneous. This means that 
liberalism is confessing to its own inner collapse, its 
bankruptcy. On the other hand it means also that there 
never was so opportune a time to show the true charac- 
ter of liberalism and to spread the New Testament 
message, as the present. 

In Germany modern theology has experienced a de- 
cided setback, a weakening all along the line.® Dr. 
William H. Drummond, secretary of the International 
Congress of Religious Liberals, says that “owing to the 


) 


143 Compare article by Professor Heinrich Weinel in The Hib- 
bert Journal for January, 1924. 








Cee, ee ee Te ee a 





a) at inn a RI a al alee ls a at 


= oo rallies Gale 


Se ee ee ne a ee eee ae ee eee. eT 


EUROPEAN MODERNISTS DISHEARTENED 275 


war various liberal religious groups in practically all 
the countries in Europe have become disheartened.’’* 
Dr. Adolph Keller, of Switzerland, in an article on 
Protestantism in Europe Today, says: “Our liberal-mind- 
ed spiritual parentage in Central Europe is in a much ° 
more dangerous situation than the conservative ele- 
ments” in those parts. He says further: “Liberal peri- 
odicals in Germany can hardly be maintained without 
foreign help. The only liberal missionary society on the 
Continent [in Germany] is in greatest peril.” Unmis- 
takably the world war has served to show the unreality, 
the inherent weakness of modernism. 


14 The Christian Register, October 25, 1923. 


XXVI 


THE INEFFICIENCY OF RELIGIOUS 
LIBERALISM } 


E have in recent years heard much about the 
W waning influence and inefficiency of the church. 

The cause is often said to be her unmodernism, 
the conservatism of her creed. Many liberal writers 
have asserted that the church is doomed if she persists 
to stand for Biblical orthodoxy. The way and the only 
way to save the church, we are told, is to open her gates 
to the modern liberalism, the new theology. This is the 
view generally held in liberalistic circles, as could be 
easily shown by quotations, were it not quite well known. 


So much more remarkable is the fact that not a few 
liberalistic writers frankly admit the inefficiency of the 
religious liberalism as compared with the old Bible faith. 
The new theology has in fact been tried out by the Uni- 
tarians and others and has proved a failure. It has not 
brought to the church the promised prosperity but has 
brought inefficiency and decay. So well known is this 
fact to those who have made investigation that it cannot 
be ignored by the representatives of liberalism. Some 
of them have, as already intimated, admitted it in their 


writings. A number of new theology writers are here | 


quoted on the subject under consideration. 


Dr. Douglas Clyde Macintosh, of Yale University, 
admits freely that “the old Christianity was positive and 
vital,” while the message of religious liberalism “has 
been predominantly negative.” “But mere negation,” 
he says further, “is not enough,” denial alone will not 





A SUBSTITUTE FOR THEOLOGY SOUGHT 277 


suffice. In an article, written jointly by a few of the 
professors of the University of Chicago, the confession 
is made: “That there are undeniable losses in the de- 
parture from orthodoxy ought to be recognized.’* Dr. 
W. H. P. Faunce, of Brown University, a leading mod- 
ernist, says: “Under the old theology there was a spirit 
of reverence and obedience now often totally lacking.’ 
Professor Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of 
Chicago, writes: “Precisely those people, whose thought- 
fulness and conscientious intelligence are imperatively 
needed in the work of the church, are also painfully 
aware that as yet nothing of a strong positive character 
has come to take the place of the older type of theolo- 
gy.’* Professor Durant Drake, of Vassar College, makes 
this confession: “But if we are candid, we must admit 
that wyon its constructive side [liberal] theology has 
less to show. We can raise far more problems than we 
can solve; and we know far less about the great enig- 
mas than men once thought they knew. The situation 
is far from satisfactory.”> “We have discarded the old 
piety,’ this author says further, “but have not worked 
- out new methods to produce the type of character we 
want.”® Again this author says: “We have not found out 
how to develop piety in the new way.” President Mc- 
Giffert speaks of our liberalistic time as “this time of 
confusion and upheaval.’ 


Professor Edward Caldwell Moore raises the ques- 
tions: “Why do traditionalists [conservatives] often 
fail of religious effectiveness? Why, however, do pro- 


1 The American Journal of Theology, 1914, p. 554. 
2 The same, 1913, p 97. 

3 The same, 1916, p. 338. 

4 The same, 1912, p. 606. 

5 Problems of Religion, p. 413. 

6 Religious Education, 1919, p. 313. 

7 The Christian Register, March 27, 1919, p. 10. 

8 The American Journal of Theology, 1911, p. 3. 


278 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


gressives [speaking of liberalists] fail still more often?’® 


The same writer admits the fact that “the liberal move- 
ment in the nineteenth century illustrates often the disin- 
tegrating and devastating effects of lberalism.’’*° Under 
new theology influences, he says further, “there has been 
less evidence of this consuming anxiety for the spiritual 
life of man, less of this moving instinct of responsibility, 
less of the spirit of that outgoing care for souls which 
quickens men to ardent adventure and puts them upon 
heroism and self-sacrifice.”4* In another instance, Pro- 
fessor Moore says: “If there is always to be a superior- 
ity of Christian devotion, of a zeal for God and love of 
man, on the side of the conservatives; if there is always 
to be a religious inferiority of liberals, then it will still 
be to the conservatives that we shall owe the best of 
the world’s work.”” 

Professor Georse Albert Coe, of Union Theologieas 
Seminary, says: “Liberalism makes for ethical clarity 
and breadth, but it easily fails of ethical fervor.’** And 
again: “The very narrowness of dogmatism seems at 
times to produce religious intensity that has power with 
men, whereas the liberal thinker tends not seldom to 
become an cnlooker rather than a doer.’ 

Only the conservative theologians, says the liberal- 
istic thinker, Professor G. Santayana, of Harvard Uni- 
versity, “have anything to say to the poor, or to the 
rich, that can refresh them.” This writer points out that 
in a frank supernaturalism “lies the sole hope of the 
church.” “Its sole dignity also lies there,” he says fur- 
ther. “As to modernism, it is suicide [for the church]. 
It is the last of those concessions to the spirit of the 


9 The American Journal of Theology, 1912, p. 4. 
10 The same, p. 5. 

11 The same, p. 11. 

12 The same, 1913, p. 25. 

13 4 Social Theory of Religious Educatite p. 348. 
14 The same, p. 336. 


* 





“SWEETENS THE PANG OF SIN” 279 


world which half-believers and double-minded prophets 
have always been found making; but it is a mortal con- 
cession. It concedes everything, for it concedes that 
everything in Christianity, as Christians hold it, is an 
illusion.”?® “The modern liberalistic view,’ the same 
writer confesses, “takes the seriousness out of religion; 
it sweetens the pang of sin which becomes misfortune; 
it steals the empirical reality away from the last judg- 
ment, from hell and from heaven; it steals historical 
reality away from the Christ of religious tradition and 
personal devotion.’’?® 

The late Professor George Burman Foster, of the 
University of Chicago, in the preface to a volume in 
which he questions or denies every one of the Christian 
fundamentals, makes the remarkable confession that he 
does not desire this book to fall into the hands of those 
who yet cling to the old faith. “I could wish with all 
my heart,” he says further, “that our fathers and moth- 
ers might enjoy the blessed calm of the evening life free 
from the spiritual bewilderment of those who have to 
wander in the region of doubt and to feel their feet slip 
just when they thought that some rock on which they 
stood was firm.” This author admits that “the full and 
solid comfort and hope which warmed the hearts and il- 
luminated the faces of the fathers” is now absent. He 
tells us that he has simply endeavored in this volume 
“to cleave to the sunnier side of doubt.” In conclusion 
he expresses the wish that “there may be light and warmth 
cnough to keep us from freezing in the dark.’*" Strange as 
it may seem, Professor Foster in the same book lauds 
doubt to the skies as one of the greatest assets to re- 
ligious life.** He wrote this book in 1909 and his later 


15 Winds of Doctrine, 1913, p. 56. 

16 The same, p. 5. 

17 The Function of Religion in Man’s Struggle for Existence, 
1909. Italics mine. 

18 The same, p. 133. 


280 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


writings show that in more recent years he came to. the 
conclusion that religious assurance (“a rock on which 
we could stand firm”) is neither possible nor needful to 
find. 

Professor Thomas N. Carver, of Harvard University, 
in an article, What Ails the Church? points out that the 
impotence of the liberal church is due to “the loss of a 
definite, soul-compelling purpose or program.” He says 
further: 


Formerly the church knew exactly what it was for; now it 
does not seem quite certain. Then there was no wavering; now 
those churches which are not merely drifting are running around 
in a circle looking for some “cause” to espouse, or something 
vaguely called “social service” to perform. Then the church 
preached a clear and definite gospel of salvation, with damnation 
as the unattractive alternative; now it is not considered quite 
polite in the best religious circles to mention damnation, and, 
since there is nothing very definite to be saved from, salvation 
has lost its meaning. If the [liberal] church had a definite, soul- 
compelling purpose, we should find the liberal churches either 
progressing, or at. least decaying less rapidly than the more nar- 
rowly orthodox churches. But the opposite is the case.19 


An object lesson as to the effect which the accept- 
ance of the new theology has on the prosperity and effi- 
ciency of the church, is presented by the church of Ger- 
many. Besides its many liberalistic pastors Germany 
had a few years before the war 120,000 teachers giving 
religious instruction in public schools who declared 
themselves to be ardent defenders of the modern relig- 
ious liberalism. Notwithstanding these facts the church 


in Germany had been fast losing ground, not only among | 


the educated but also the laboring classes. The latter, 
even before the war, had been largely won for atheistic 
socialism. A liberal theologian of Nuremberg, Germany, 
Dr. Rittelmeyer, said in 1910 in an article treating on 


_ 19 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 381 f. Italics 
mine. 








ORIGIN OF MODERNIST THEOLOGY 281 


the effect of the new theology on the efficiency of the 
church: 


If we honestly inquire into the question as to the practical 
effects of modern theology, we must admit that the masses of the 
working people, counting millions, do not appreciate the church. 
Not only do they, at least as far as Germany is concerned, dis- 
trust the church but they refuse to have anything to do with it. 
And how about the educated classes? We have long made a 
hobby of the endeavor to win those who are supposed to be 
alienated and estranged because they consider the church too 
conservative. But what are the actual results? True, there are 
those who acknowledge that modern theology alone has en- 
abled them to remain in the church. But how insignificantly 
small is the number of these. 

What is the cause of the failure? Wherein consists the 
weakness of advanced theological thought? The answer is, mod- 
ern theology is the child of criticism. It may be rightfully said 
that it is of a negative character. We can readily understand the 
complaint of the orthodox who say: “One thing after the other 
is doubted and rejected and eliminated. Farther and farther 
goes this process of disintegration. What will remain in the 
end?” Modern theology is lacking, not only in distinctive- 
ness of its message, but in regenerating power which the old 
faith really had. Jesus is for us not the Saviour of the world 
and Redeemer of mankind, as he is for orthodoxy. 


A Unitarian writer observes: “Some people say the 
religious liberal is often more liberal than religious. 
Why is this true? One reason is that he has lost interest 
in the old forms of religion without gaining enthusiasm 
for the new.””° The editor of the Unitarian organ says: 
“There is far deeper conviction among the people who 
stand fast in the old order of doctrine than there is among 
those in the new.’’®4 Professor William Adams Brown, of 
Union Theological Seminary, New York, writes: 

What is to become, we are asked, of Sunday-observance, 


church-going, family worship, the habit of Bible reading and of 
daily prayer, if no firmer basis can be provided for their support 


20 The Christian Register, July 8, 1920, p. 19. 
21 The same, January 6, 1921, p. 3. Italics mine, 


282 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


than the generalities of the new theology? And we ourselves, 
when we consider the easy-going religion which is all about us, 
often share this feeling, and wish now and again that we could 
recover the unquestioning faith of an earlier age, even at the 
price of some of its intolerance and narrowness.?2 


Professor Albert Parker Fitch, of Amherst College, 
observes: “The great failure of the new age was and is 
that it has not yet found, or at any rate not whole- 
heartedly accepted any adequate substitute [for the old 
theology].” This writer realizes that many who have 
discarded the older religious views “practically annihi- 
late the distinction between good and evil and abandon 
themselves to a sort of emotional chaos and moral sen- 
timentalism. Such extreme individualism is common 
and lamentable enough.’’** 

Clearly religious liberalism, having not yet found an 
acceptable substitute for the old faith, no solid founda- 
tion upon which to build, is in a bad way. Small won- 
der that liberalists speak of “our bewildered and dis- 
couraged religious life.” What a contrast between the 
old Christian faith and the modern liberalistic religion 
expressing the pious hope that “there may be light and 
warmth enough to keep us from freezing in the dark.” 

Modernists have commonly supposed that the prin- 
ciple of liberty would serve as a foundation for a mod- 
ernist religious structure, and a substitute for the Chris- 
tian faith. We shall presently see that the Unitarians, 
for example, are united on no other ground than liberty. 
Every church or congregation is strictly autonomous — 
a law unto itself —in matters of teaching and practice. 
More recently various leading modernists have appar- 
ently become disillusioned on this point. They begin to 
realize that liberty, being in itself a negative principle, 
does not offer a real foundation for a religious union. A 

22 The Harvard Theological Review, January, 1911, p. 17. 


23 Can the Church Survive? p. 72. 
24 4 Guide to the Study of the Christian Religion, p. 749. 


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LIBERTY AS A FOUNDATION 283 


noted Unitarian writer raised the question, “Is the 
church to become a ‘free church’ only, or is it to become 
a church with a purpose also? Would a church that is 
merely free be worth the energy to hold it together?” 
Dr. F. Dijkema, a modernist Mennonite minister in Am- 
sterdam, Holland, wrote an article admitting that lib- 
erty has proved a foundation of sand. He realizes that 
modernism is lacking a foundation and, unless a foun- 
dation may be found, it has no future as a substitute for 
Christianity. He says: 


What the last half century has taught us is that the medernist 
teachings did not show the vitality which we had expected them 
to have. And if we ask for the reason why we have been disap- 
pointed in our hope, the answer is principally twofold: Modern- 
ism has found it impossible to create for itself a theological 
foundation; it has no unifying theology, no common fundament- 
al principle, and secondly, the masses of the people have not 
been attracted by it; we did not succeed in the effort to interest 
them in the liberalistic teachings. 


We have no settled points of doctrine, but what do we 
have? Is there not more clearness of aim needed, a greater cer- 
tainty than we now have? 

The question remains, Can there be found for modernism 
a positive fundamental principle? It has been supposed that 
the principle of liberty or freedom will serve this purpose. But, 
as Professor Opzoomer has rightly said, “To be a Protestant it 
is not sufficient to have a zeal for liberty. It is true that the 
principle of faith loses its strength without the principle of 
freedom, but the principle of freedom is meaningless without 
the principle of faith.” Liberty is after all a negative concep- 
tion and can therefore not be considered the common funda- 
mental principle of the modernists. 


Professor Roessingh has shown that now, since the mod- 
ernists have dropped the belief in an authoritative divine rev- 
elation, they are lacking a foundation.?6 


The question is here in order, if fair-minded liberal- 





25 The Christian Register, February 12, 1920, p. 11. 
26 De Zondagsbode, (Leiden, Holland), June 24, 1923. 


284 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


ists confess to the weakness and inefficiency of religious 
liberalism, why do they prefer it to’the old Bible faith? 
Why do they not discard it? Their answer is that the 
modern mind is unwilling to accept the supernatural 
Christian faith. The existence of Almighty God is de- 
nied, hence there is no room for the miraculous and 
supernatural. Modernism, then, recognizes the power 
and efficiency of the old faith but rejects it on the sup- 
position that it is unreasonable. We are asked to be- 
lieve that an inefficient faith is more reasonable than the 
one that is efficient. The Bible faith, we are told, is 
void of a sound foundation. It is difficult to see, on the 
other hand, that the modern liberalistic religion, which 
disowns the inspiration and authority of Scripture, has 
any foundation that is worthy of the name. In the final 
analysis its foundation is found to be of a character mak- 
ing it unacceptable to those who do their own thinking. 








XXVII + 


THE FAILURE OF UNITARIANISM 


of the trinity of God and of the deity of Christ. 

The early history of the American Unitarian 
Church is an illustration to the adage that truth is 
stranger than fiction. Early in the last century Uni- 
tarian teaching gained a foothold in Harvard College, 
the institution in which. at that time the ministers for the 
Congregational churches in eastern Massachusetts were 
trained. In consequence Harvard College turned out 
ministerial candidates that were theologically unsound. 
To provide for the training of orthodox Congregational 
ministers Andover Seminary was established, in 1807. 
Though Unitarianism found its way into some of the 
congregations, the majorities in the congregations were 
almost without exception orthodox. Now the Unitarian 
leaders, instead of advising the liberalistic minorities in 
the congregations to secede from the Congregational 
Church and organize themselves, claimed the right of 
imposing ministers of their own persuasion upon the or- 
thodox majorities. 


T Unitarians derive their name from their denial 


The story of how the liberalistic leaders succeeded in 
this endeavor constitutes a dark chapter in ecclesiastical 
history. They found, on the statue books of the state 
of Massachusetts, an old law which, in their opinion, 
gave the parish—or the population of a town— the right 
to elect the minister for the church. As a rule the ma- 
jority of the population were liberal in sentiment. Hence 
the Unitarians hoped that, with the assistance of the 
liberal outsiders, they could obtain control of the church. 


286 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


The said law is as follows: “The several towns, parish- 
es, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious soci- 
eties, shall at all times have the exclusive right of elect- 
ing their public teachers and of contracting with them 
for their support and maintenance.” It is worthy of no- 
tice that this law distinguishes between parishes and re- 
ligious societies. Evidently it gives churches the ex- 


clusive right to elect their public teachers, or ministers. | 


Before the enactment of this law there were older laws 
in force which made it possible for the Legislature of 
the state to impose ministers of their own choice upon a 
church; it was for this reason—namely to make void 
the older laws—that the said law was enacted. The 
phrase “exclusive right” refers to the right of religious 
and political societies, and means exclusive of the Leg- 
islature. Now the unheard-of meaning was read into it 
that the parish, or the population of a town—e-xclusive of 
the church, had the right to elect the minister for the 
church. 

On the strength of this law, or rather of that curious 
interpretation of it, the parish,—the legal voters — of 
the town of Dedham, Mass., called, in 1818, the Unitari- 
an Alvan Lamson as minister of the First Congregation- 
al Church, in spite of the protests of two-thirds of the 
church. They also called a council of Unitarians to or- 
dain him. Significantly enough, the council which per- 
formed the ordination included President Kirkland of 
Harvard College, Henry Ware, the most prominent the- 
ological professor of Harvard, William Ellery Channing, 
- of Boston, a noted Unitarian theologian, and other Uni- 
tarians of prominence, indicating that the Unitarian 
leaders accepted the new interpretation of the said law. 
Thereupon the orthodox majority of the church at Ded- 
ham seceded, leaving the church house to the minority. 
Not satisfied with this, however, the Unitarians now al- 
so claimed the endowments of the church. The case be- 








2 


ee rae 


“LEGALIZED PLUNDER” 287 


ing taken to the courts, a decision was given in their 
favor. ‘This decision formed a precedent for all subse- 
quent action in many other Congregational churches. 
In October, 1820, the Supreme Court whose judges were 
of the Unitarian persuasion,’ decided that a church had 
no legal existence and no legal rights whatever, except 
if supported by the parish, i.e. by the legal voters of a 
town, hence an orthodox majority in a church must give 
up their property rights to a Unitarian minority, if the 
latter were backed by a majority of the legal voters. In 
case the whole church be orthodox, the parish (if the 
liberals were a majority in it) could, in the opinion of 
the Court, claim all the rights of the church including 
the property rights, for “to all legal purposes the seces- 
sion of the whole church from the parish [!] would be 
the extinction of the church,” and a church that might 
afterwards be organized with the consent of the parish 
would succeed to the name and property of the seceded 
orthodox church. In consequence of this action of the 
Supreme Court eighty-one Congregational churches, not 
a few of them with rich endowments, were turned over 
- to the Unitarians. 

“The orthodox majorities were indignant,” says Pro- 
fessor J. W. Platner, “because property and rights were 
seen passing into the legal possession of minorities, a 
transaction which seemed to them to violate every in- 
herited principle of fair play. They believed the action 
taken under the court’s ruling was little short of legalized 
plunder.’ Dean Fenn, of Harvard University, writes: 
“The conservatives were willing, be it said to their glo- 
ry, to forfeit the accumulation of years, to labor and sac- 
rifice in the upbuilding of new churches which should 
perpetuate the ancient creed.”® 





1 Bacon, The Congregationalists, p. 183. 
2 The Religious History of New England, p. 62. 
3 The same, p. 111. 


288 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


As regards the doctrinal position of the early .Uni- 
tarians, it should be noted, first of all, that they believed 
the doctrine of the sinfulness of man to be a mere fig- 
ment of the imagination and a source of evil. They were 
of the opinion that a great moral reformation would re- 
sult from the rejection of the Biblical doctrine of sin and 
the acceptance of the idea of inherent human goodness. 
The time was at hand, they said, when the Christian 
church, in order to enjoy prosperity, must preach “the 
rectitude and dignity of human nature,” making super- 
natural salvation superfluous. At any rate those who 
were born in Boston and vicinity, so the common hu- 
morous saying was, had no need to be born again. The 
fact is, the Unitarians teach that regeneration is not 
needed to implant the divine life, nor is divine grace 
needed for the development of such life. 

Dr. Samuel A. Eliot, the President of the American 
Unitarian Association, has, with the co-operation of an- 
other Unitarian minister, written an article in which he 
says, not only Christianity but “all religions have this 
[essential] religion of the spirit.”* From this statement 
it might be inferred that, in order to be saved, it is, in 
his opinion, necessary to accept some religion, be it 
Christianity or another religious system. This is not 
Dr. Eliot’s view, however. The Unitarian Church teach- 
es that the natural religion which every person possess- 
es is sufficient for salvation. According to Unitarian- 
ism the divine is naturally in man, even the most degrad- 
ed and depraved, and it may be developed by natural 
means, just as the oak is developed from the acorn, If 
it remains undeveloped, the loss is not great, for he is 
saved nevertheless. Therefore, when Dr. Eliot says 
that “all religions have this religion of the spirit,’ he 
does not mean that persons who do not formally adhere 


4 Article Unitarians, in The New International Encyclopedia. 








A CHURCH WITHOUT A CREED 289 


to any religion are devoid of the religion of the spirit. 

As for sin, it does not figure large in Unitarian, or in 
general liberalistic teaching. The acceptance of the 
idea of God’s immanence takes away its sting. Sin does 
not really matter much. “We do not know what to do 
with sin,” said a speaker in a Unitarian convention held 
in Philadelphia a few years ago. Since the Unitarian 
Church teaches that ‘‘all men are God’s children,” there 
is no need of a Savior. A good example, such as Jesus 
gave us, is desirable, but it is not essential. The idea of 
the supernatural is rejected. As for the immortality of 
the soul, the Unitarian Church is on this point, as on all 
other doctrinal points, strictly neutral. As a church 
they do not teach that the soul survives the death of the 
body. “Unitarianism is belief in the humanity of God 
and the divinity of man,” as one of the official state- 
ments of Unitarian teachings has it.® 

“The first and most fundamental characteristic of 
Unitarianism is that it is an undogmatic’ church,” says 
Professor Christie, of the Unitarian seminary at Mead- 
ville, Pa.; “it is a church without a creed and without 
’ official theology.”® And again this writer says: “The 
Unitarians have no creed and exclude no one from fel- 
lowship because of doctrinal opinions.”? This means 
that doctrinally the Unitarians do not take any position. 
To them any doctrine is acceptable so long as it is not 
believed to be essential or accepted as acreed. There is, 
practically, only one exception to this statement. The 
Unitarians are not kindly disposed to the old evangelical 
faith. They devote their energies to combating Biblical 
orthodoxy. Provided, however, that the old faith is 
discarded, they believe as a church, that nothing really 


5 Declaration of Belief of Western Unitarian Churches, adopted 
May 19, 1887. 

6 The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 554. 

7 United States Census Report. Religious Bodies; 1906, Part 
2, p. 841 


290 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


matters in the way of doctrine. It has sometimes been 
supposed that Unitarians have a creed, since some of 
their conferences are agreed on the idea of the father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of man. But their 
own assertion that they are a creedless church is evi- 
dently correct. In fact, there are Unitarians who do 
not believe in a personal God; hence to them the phrase 
“God's fatherhood” has no real meaning. Some of the 
Unitarian ministers teach rank atheism.® 

The Unitarian message does not materially differ 
from that of religious liberalism in general. It is of a 
negative character, a denial of the Christian truth. The 
content of the message of modern liberalism is, as we 
have seen, that all men are divine, whether or not they 
desire to be, and do not need vital salvation. In other 
words, liberalism teaches that neither Christianity nor 
any other religious system has an essential message of 
salvation, and no such message is needed. Unitarian 
preachers, as well as liberalists who are not identified 
with the Unitarians, have boasted that they are not so 
narrow as to think that what they preach is essentially 
better than the ideas of those who differ from them (pro- 
vided they be not orthodox Christians). Indeed to ad- 
vance the opinion that there is no vital difference be- 
tween Biblical and non-Biblical religious teaching is the 
only consistent position for those who deny the inspira- 
tion of Scripture and do not claim to have an authori- 
tative message from God. But the fact cannot be ig- 
nored that a church taking such an attitude necessarily 
makes the impression of being run for the purpose of 
apologizing for its own existence. A Unitarian minister 
writes : 


Lacking sadly the goodness of the Bible type, we are re- 
sorting to all sorts of material devices to inform people who are 
not the least interested in what we are doing or in what we pro-~ 


8 Compare pp. 70, 77 and 254 of the present book. 








' 


A CHURCH WITHOUT A MESSAGE 291 


pose to do, that we are in existence, and that if they do not help 
to fill our depleted ranks we must soon go out of existence. 
All these measures to revive a dying church would be comical 
were they not so tragical.® 

“In the absence of some kind of doctrine of salva- 
tion,” says Professor Thomas N. Carver, of Harvard 
University, “Christian work has lost its definite mean- 
ing; it means little more than to persuade people to join 
the church.” Again Professor Carver says: “This per- 
petual program for membership [without a message of 
salvation] brings the church under that class of organ- 
isms whose energy is all expended in keeping alive in 
trying to save their own life. Such an organism ought 
to die, and in a rational universe it must eventually 
die.”*° Since, according to the declaration of a Unitarian 
confercnce, “the progress of mankind is onward and up- 
ward forever,” the task of the church is, to all appear- 
ances, not a serious one, so much the less as Unitarians, 
with other religious liberalists believe that Jesus never 
founded a church. The Unitarians do not look upon 
the church as a distinct spiritual covenanted body, but 
‘ rather as nothing more than a society. Significantly the 
editor of The Christian Register says, the Register is not 
only the organ of the members of the Unitarian Church, 
but of “the increasing thousands of liberals in every 
other denomination in Christendom, and of course im oth- 
er faiths besides. And we are mindful of the perhaps 
even largest number of all who for reasons sufficient un- 
to their own hearts are outside any church or religious 
body. All these are our normal constituency.”™ Taking 
such facts into consideration it is plausible that James 
Freeman Clarke, the noted liberalistic historian, could 
rightfully say: “The Unitarian churches of Boston see 


9 The Christian Register, August 26, 1920, p. 13. Italics mine. 
10 The Harvard Theological Review, 1915, p. 384 f. 
11 The Christian Register, October 31, 1918, Italics mine. 


292 MODERN RELIGIOUS: LIBERALISM 


no reason for diffusing their faith. They treat it as a 
luxury to be kept for themselves...I have heard it said 
that they do not wish to make Unitarianism too com- 
mon.”!?. “Perhaps no churches have shown less sense 
of responsibility for the population of a given precinct,” 
says Dr. L. W. Bacon.** Ralph Waldo Emerson, a lead- 
er of Unitarian thought, once referred to Unitarianism 
as “an we chest.’’\* | 

Since Unitarians consider questions of faith and creed 
of secondary importance, it would be natural to suppose 
that they give more attention than the orthodox to mat- 
ters of morality and reform. Such is not the case, how- 
ever. A Unitarian writer says: | 

A Unitarian layman said to me once, “The evangelical 
churches put up with a lot of stuff from their ministers about 
the sin of drinking and smoking that we would never tolerate 
in our churches.” We have had a few brilliant leaders in such 
reforms but the fight, which has been waged against booze and 
tobacco, has been done almost entirely by the orthodox. This 
is all the stranger when one thinks how liberal churches stress 
the importance of a religion of science.15 

Concerning the favorable conditions which marked 
the beginnings of the Unitarian Church in America, Dr. 
George E. Ellis, a Unitarian theologian and author, says 
the Unitarians from the beginning were confident that 
before fifty years should have passed “orthodoxy would 
have become a thing of the past while Unitarianism 
would be the prevailing type of religion.’”*® Dr. L. W. 
Bacon, in The Story of the Churches, writes: 

Never in all the course of church history has a new religious 
movement started with so magnificent a send-off as this. The 
venerable college at Cambridge was under its control. Besides 
the church buildings, productive funds for religious uses amount- 


12 Bacon, The Congregationalists, 1904, p. 251. 

18 The same, p. 173. 

14 The Harvard Theological Review, 1918, p. 304. 

15 Unity, (Chicago, Ill.), January 10, 1924. 

16 Dunning, Congregationalists in America, 1894, p. 302. 


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MISTAKEN PROPHETS 293 


ing, it was estimated, to $600,000 [a very large sum at that time] 
were in its possession, .The wealth, culture, and social influ- 
ence of Boston were Unitarian, The Unitarian clergy list was 
such a roster of splendid names as no clergy of like number in 
Christendom could show. There was much to justify the pro- 
phecy that was uttered that the Unitarians would presently be- 
come the prevailing form of American Christianity.17 

Never prophets proved more sadly mistaken than 
those who predicted that the Unitarians would outdis- 
tance the other denominations. The Unitarian Church 
never showed real vitality. It ‘has remained numerically 
weak and today has the unmistakable evidences of anae- 
mia and decay. As early as the year 1839, the Uni- 
tarian leader, Dr. W. E. Channing, wrote: “I would that 
I could look to Unitarianism with more hope. But this 
system, being a protest against certain dogmas, rather 
than the work of deep religious principle, was early par- 
alyzed by the mixture of material philosophy and fell 
too much into the hands of scholars and political re- 
formers, and the consequence is a lack of vitality and 
force. *? 

The Unitarians have no foreign mission work. In 
the home land they are carrying on a work of literature 
distribution, devoting the income of a fund of about a 
million dollars to this purpose. Hundreds of thousands 
of booklets and tracts are annually sent free to those 
who desire to read them, and space is bought in news- 
papers for the dissemination of Unitarian teachings. In 
this way not a few members of other denominations have 
been won for liberalism. “Unitarians have been re- 
proached,” says the editor of the leading Unitarian pa- 
per, “because their membership is largely made up of 
those who were formerly of another persuasion.”?*How- 
ever, it is by no means the case that all who, caeuen 


17 The Story of ve Churches, 1904, p. 170, 
18 The same, p. 316 
19 The Christian Register, August 14, 1919, p. 3. 


294 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Unitarian influence, accept the liberalistic position and 
renounce their membership in evangelical churches, cast 
their lot with the Unitarian Church. Evidently many 
religious liberals, including the great majority of those 
who were brought up in Unitarian families, are of the 
opinion that a position of general doctrinal indifferent- 
ism and neutrality makes the existence of the church su- 
perfluous. The average man who accepts the Unitarian 
message fails to see a valid purpose for a church and 
hence does not join the Unitarian connection. It is a 
significant fact that, as already said, Unitarians fail to 
win the great majority of their own children for their 
society. 

A noted Unitarian minister, Dr. Charles E. Park, ob- 
serves that there is in the Unitarian Church “a predom- 
inance of gray heads and noticeable lack of young peo- 
ple.”2? Again a writer in The Christian Register says, 
““The Unitarian Church is the church of the mature 
mind and confirmed heart.’ This was the reply of a Uni- 
tarian minister to the question as to why there are so 
few young people in our church.””*. Another writer in 
the same periodical, referring to the Unitarian denomi- 
nation, speaks of “our anaemia and our slow dying rate.’”’*? 
Again a writer in the same paper, a Unitarian minister, 
says: “The fact that our church is dying has frightened 
us into nervous activity which might well be directed 
toward a search for the cause.”* Ernest J. Bowden 
writes in the Unitarian organ: 

I have worshipped with many groups of religious liberals 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and have often been amazed to 
find that they have completely lost the power of intensive devo- 


tion. Many of our meetings are held without prayer or its 
equivalent. It is not that our people are without religion, but 


20 The Christian Regist>r, June 5, 1919, p. 5. 

21 The same, November 13, 1919, p. 

22 The same, March 21, 1918, p. 2. Italics mine. 
23 The same, September rs 1920, p. 9. 


* a 1 a a 








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7A 
he 


“SOMETHING LACKING IN OUR GOSPEL” 295 


they are spendthrift, living on the capital of the past, on the 
prayers of the generations departed.?4 

If we raise the question of the deeper causes of Uni- 
tarian inefficiency, and decay, we find some striking an- 
swers in the leading Unitarian organ. A writer in this 
paper says: “When Unitarians develop an evangelism 
which sends out preachers and teachers, exhorters and 
inspirers, that can drive home conviction of sin and can 
awaken the sense of moral responsibility, we will start 
to grow.””> Another writer in the periodical just men- 
tioned says: “Instead of considering theology of such 
negligible importance that God must be referred to from 
the pulpit in only the most general terms, ought we not 
to value it as a normal stimulus to mental and spiritual 
growth?’ And the editor of the same paper writes: 
“All the Sunday lectures on economics, sociology, la- 
bor parties, single tax, poetry and the Bolsheviki are not 
to be compared with those innermost questions of the 
spirit which have made theology the queen of sciences.’’? 
Again this writer says: “Do we know that a church is as 
strong as its theology?’?* Another writer in the Uni- 
tarian organ is of the opinion that the decay of Unitar- 
ianism can not be remedied by propaganda and organi- 
zation alone; in his view “there is something lacking tn 
our gospel itself.’?® Again the Unitarian editor has in 
another instance the following to say: 

This whole subject of theology is of transcendent interest 
and importance. We should rejoice if our readers would warm 
up to a searching, good-tempered, persistent discussion of doc- 
trinal matters. The need among thoughtful people in our church- 
es of just this thing is almost pitiable. Nothing is more crying. 
Theology is the articulation of religion, and we must have it or 


—— 


24 The Christian Register, February 14, 1924. 
25 The same, April 11, 1918, p. 7. 

26 The same, November 27, 1919, p. 12. 

27 The same, March 21, 1918, p. 2. 

28 The same, April 15, 1920, p. 2. 

29 The same, September 2, 1920, p. 9. 


296 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


die spiritually. ‘The religion of the inarticulate” is pure non- 
sense. We have got to put it in clear-cut words. 

Now this is an interesting situation. Representa- 
tive men in the Unitarian Church come out with the 
open confession that the great need for Unitarians is a 
theology. They believe a theology is absolutely essen- 
tial to the life and prosperity of a church. Yet, there is 
abundant proof that the Unitarians as a church do not 
have a theology. The very essence of the Unitarian po- 
sition, and of liberalism in general, is, in fact, that doc- 
trine and theology are so unimportant that every man 
should be considered a law unto himself in such matters 
and the church should not stand for a particular theol- 
ogy. Religion, they say, “is a thing which exists inde- 
pendently of definite theological doctrines.” And is it 
not a fair assumption that the Unitarian editor, since he 
recognizes the weakness of a church without a theology, 
might make his paper of some service in that direction 
to its constituency? But the Christian Register is, by its 
own confession, an organ of religious liberalists both 
within and without the ranks of nominal Christendom. 
This paper publishes articles defending the baldest athe- 
ism. In an editorial review of a book in which theology 
is regarded as rather of the nature of astrology — super- 
stition—the Christian Register said: “It is for holding 
precisely the views here set forth that Unitarians have 
been denied Christian name and fellowship.”s1 

What is here said about the message and teaching 
of Unitarianism applies equally to religious liberalism 
ta general, as advocated by some of the leading theolog- 
ical seminaries of America. This is a fact that is gen- 
erally recognized by Unitarians. The President of the 
American Unitarian Association says: “Unitarianism 


380 The Christian Register, March 20, 1919, p. 5. 
31 The same, February 20, 1919. The book here mentioned is 
Bes New Orthodoxy, by Professor Ames, of the bien, of 
hicago. 





FOES FROM WITHIN 297 


means the system of religion of certain churches and in- 
dividuals whose Christianity is of the liberal type.” 
Professor Francis A. Christie writes: “The modernism 
of theological view professed by Unitarians is some- 
times indistinguishable from the modernism permitted 
in other Christian groups, and the necessity of a sepa- 
rate organization [such as the Unitarian Church] con- 
sidered as a protest against older theological views, is 
often disputed [by liberals in evangelical churches].’’** 
And the Unitarian editor says: “In all of the orthodox 
denominations there is a liberal wing in which the the- 
ological difference between them and us is almost noth- 
ing.”** It would take a microscopic analysis to discern 
the difference between some of the liberals in evangel- 
ical churches and the Unitarians,” says Zion’s Herald. 
Some of the Unitarian leaders have expressed their 
grievance that men who advocate Unitarian teaching 
stick to evangelical churches. Others again believe, 
and indeed rightfully, that the cause of liberalism is 
served better if the liberals stay in these churches “and 
reform them from within,” as a liberalistic writer ex- 
presses himself. Former President Taft, a member of 
the Unitarian Church, said in a public address: “The one 
trouble we suffer from —if it be a trouble — is that there 
are so many Unitarians in other churches. They are 
one with us in faith but do not sit in the pews of our 
Church. But that means that they [the other churches] 
are coming to us.” Without question ex-President Taft 
is right. Religious liberalism within the evangelical 
churches is a far more serious danger to the Biblical 
faith than without. Decidedly, a foe from within is the 
greater menace. It should be added that many liberal 
ministers in evangelical denominations have united with 


32 The New International Encyclopedia, Article “Unitarianism.” 
33 The American Journal of en Nee 1917, p. 554. 
34 The Christian Register, April 15, 1920. 


298 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


the Unitarians, only to be disappointed in the hope of 
success under the banners of outspoken liberalism. A 
prominent Unitarian writer testifies that “sixty per cent 
of those who enter our ministry from other denomina- 
tions, leave it,”** to engage in some other occupation, 
finding obviously, the liberal ministry an unsatisfactory 
calling. This fact is the more noteworthy, as the ma- 
jority of Unitarian preachers were formerly ministers 
in evangelical churches. : 


The question suggests itself, How is it to be account- 
ed for that evangelical churches whose ministers preach 
Unitarian doctrine, continue in some instances to show 
a growth and prosperity unknown in organized Unitari- 
anism? The answer is obvious. There are those who 
will unite with an evangelical church that has a liberal 
minister, but would not do so if the denomination in 
question were officially-committed to liberalism. Many 
are of the opinion that the preaching of the new theolo- 
gy from pulpits of evangelical churches is a passing phe- 
nomenon and that the churches after all stand for the 
old theology. 


The New Theology comes to us with great preten- 
sions. The old evangelical faith, so we are told, has out- 
lived its usefulness. A new theology is needed which, 
by eliminating the supernatural, will make the Chris- 
tian religion acceptable to the modern mind and thus 
save the church from (supposed) utter failure and in- 
sure her continued prosperity. Now in the light of the 
history and present condition of Unitarianism it must 
be said that these pretentious claims cannot be taken 
seriously. The Unitarians have tried out the modern 
liberalism. It has utterly failed to bring efficiency and 
prosperity to the church. While they have influenced 
multitudes toward discarding the Christian faith, they 


85 The same, October 23, 1919, p. 6. 





ee a ee 








A COSTLY EXPERIMENT 299 


have not succeeded in the effort to persuade many of 
them to support an undogmatic church. So prominent 
a Unitarian leader as Professor Christie says: “As an un- 
dogmatic church Unitarianism is conducting a great 
historic experiment.”*® In other words, Unitarianism is, 
after a century of effort and unparalleled opportunity, 
still in the experimental stage. It is conducting an ex- 
periment to ascertain whether an undogmatic religious 
society can be successfully established. And what a 
costly experiment the fight against the truth of the 
Gospel has proved! As for the Christian Church, it 
never had an experimental stage. It was from the very 
beginning engaged in the great work of saving souls 
and rendering to them service for their Christian life. 

The history of organized religious liberalism — with- 
in as well as without the Unitarian connection — offers 
an interesting field to the religious student. It affords 
unanswerable proof that the liberalization of Protestant- 
ism means its disintegration. 


36 The American Journal of Theology, October, 1917, p. 554. 


XXVIII J 


THE CHASM BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE 
NEW THEOLOGY | 


eralism seems to be unable to understand the posi- 
“- tion of those who believe that the Christian faith 
was once for all delivered to the saints through divine 
revelation. Of the inability, on the part of liberals, to 
understand the old faith there is a great deal of evidence. 

Modernists say, for example, the old faith has no oth- 
er foundation than the authority of the theologians or of 
the church. They tell us that conservatives, instead of 
asking, “What is true?’ ask, “What is authorized?” 
But the thought that the church, or the theologians, 
may on their own authority defend a religious doctrine, 
is, as intelligent people usually know, contrary to ortho- 
dox teaching and considered offensive in evangelical 
Christendom. Need it be said that he who recognizes 


|: is peculiarly interesting to notice that religious lib- 


the Bible as God’s Word, accepts its teachings as true, 


not as merely humanly authorized doctrines concerning 
which it is not known whether they be true or not? Is 


it not an insult to say of the conservatives that instead 


of asking, “What is true?” they ask, “What is author- 
ized?” 

Again representatives of the new theology say, they 
cannot accept the Biblical doctrine of salvation. They 
advance the view that salvation in the Bible sense is of 
a selfish — sinful — character. A number of writers have 
said, salvation must be socially interpreted and, unless 


God will save all mankind, their moral nature will not | 


permit them to consent to their own personal salvation. 








SS ee 


oS ee eee ae 


ie 


i ss 
ae ese eee ee 


FUNDAMENTAL CONTRASTS 301 


The desire and willingness to be personally saved, they 
say, is rooted in selfishness. Mark well, we are asked 
by liberalistic theologians to accept the opinion that to 
do the will of God, as Scripture requires, and seek per- 
sonal salvation, is selfishness. If this were correct, it 
would follow that He whom we serve is not the God 
who has revealed Himself in Scripture but is a being 
_who delights in selfishness and sin. Has there ever 
been heard a more miserable falsification than the asser- 
tion that salvation, such as Christ and the apostles 
preached, is grounded in selfishness? Is not, on the con- 
trary, the acceptance of the old Gospel and the persona! 
experience and realization of salvation the only true an- 
tidote to selfishness? 


One of the fundamental Christian principles is the 
futility of self-effort in the realm of the true inner Chris- 
tian life. The sinner seeking salvation must come to 
the place where he realizes that he cannot be his own 
savior, that his own effort availeth nothing; he must be 
willing to surrender himself and take salvation as a 
free gift of grace. The same principle holds good in 
every other phase of the true spiritual life. The great- 
est need for growth in grace and for the continuation of 
conscious Christian experience on the part of the believ- 
er is the deep realization of the worthlessness of self- 
effort, and the desire that the self-life should cease. 
Mark well, this does not mean indifference or indolence, 
but the very opposite. This principle is emphasized in 
Scripture. Our Lord has taught that self, or the self- 
life should be denied, that without Him we can do noth- 
ing, that the branch must draw life from the vine, that 
to the poor in spirit is the kingdom of heaven, that “my 
strength is made perfect in weakness.” And Paul says: 
“When I am weak, then am I strong” (II Cor. 12:10), 
and again: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I 
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which 


302 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of 
God who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). 
Now this principle is a rock of offence to representa- 
tives of liberal religion. For illustration: A Unitarian 
editor refers to an acticle in The Sunday School Times as 
“amazingly harmful stuff.” In this article it was shown 
that ‘““God’s provision for a Spirit-filled life is just a pro- 
vision for people who recognize their weakness and who 
have no illusion as to their strength.” Commenting on 
this, the Unitarian editor says: “Such exegesis is a 
crime.”? | 

Furthermore it has been said of various representa- 
tives of liberal religion. For illustration: A Unitarian 
do not regard salvation as a reality for this world but 
for another — not as a present reality but as something 
to take place in another world. Now, evidently, con- 
sidered from the viewpoint of liberalism, salvation in any 
true sense is out of the question, for the good reason 
that the Savior is denied. When, however, liberalists 
tell us that for those also who personally accept the old 
Gospel message there is no salvation in this life, they 
are making a rather curious assertion. He who realizes 
salvation as a blessed present reality, having in Christ 
a daily living, present, satisfying Savior—to such an 
one the said assertion of liberalism is absurd. 

The fact remains, then, that representatives of re- 
ligious liberalism find themselves unable to understand 
and appreciate the old Biblical truth. Of the things 
that are the essence of the Christian life and Christian 
truth they speak as the blind speak of the colors. Even 
the most precious truth of the atonement through Christ 
they regard as morally objectionable.? In the midst of 
a land of Bibles they find themselves in dense spiritual 
darkness. 


1 The Christian Register, August 19, 1920, p. 3. 
2 Compare p. 268 of the present book. 





MODERNIZING THEOLOGY 303 


Dr. Francis Landey Patton, former President of 
Princeton Theological Seminary, has well said: “The 
only hope of Christianity is in the rehabilitating of the 
Pauline theology. It is back, back, back to an incarnate 
Christ and the atoning blood, or it is on, on, on to athe-_ 
ism and despair.” It would be useless to deny that the 
liberalizing and modernizing of theology has inherent 
atheistic tendencies; in fact, the full-fledged moderni- 
- zation of theology, as represented by the more advanced 
type of religious liberalism, demanding the democratiza- 
tion of God, is atheism. Evidence for this statement has 
been given elsewhere. Only recently a Unitarian editor 
published, under the title Modermzing Two Basic Beliefs, 
an article discussing a book in which the beliefs in God 
and immortality are radically denied, and such denial is 
spoken of as modernizing these doctrines. Moderniz- 
ing the faith is, in the language of hberalism, denying 
the faith. 

Liberalists tell us that intellectual difficulties stand 
in the way of accepting the old Bible faith. Considered 
from the world’s viewpoint this cannot be denied. But 
‘the thought that the difficulties can be lessened or elim- 
inated by “restating” or liberalizing theology, is a delu- 
sion and a snare. The contrary is true. The acceptance 
of the new theology position raises difficulties that are 
greater than those of orthodoxy. 


The outstanding fact is often ignored that religious 
liberalism, though coming under a Christian name, has 
no acceptable foundation. Therefore it cannot claim 
reasonableness. We are told by representatives of lib- 
eralism that the question of the new theology’s founda- 
tion is, like theology itself, a secondary matter, but this 
assertion is unacceptable to thinking people. The theo- 
logian who recedes from the rock foundation of God’s 


3 The Christian Register, May 9, 1918, p. 15. 


304 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


Word, in order to take what he may suppose to be more 
reasonable ground, will, upon close examination, find 
that his new position is beset with greater difficulties 
than the orthodox position. If he is a thinking person 
he must sooner or later go backward or forward. It 
has been pointed out that many have gone forward into 
what is nothing more nor less than sugar-coated athe- 
ism, and others are drifting in that direction. It should 
be added that moderate liberalism shows an unmistak- 
able tendency of drifting into radical liberalism. And 
yet, the atheist’s position is an utterly untenable one. 
In fact, atheism (the denial of God, or the teaching that 
God is merely the immanent world energy) is a most 
unreasonable supposition. That learned men doubt the 
existence of God — deny that there is a great mind and 
purpose back of the universe—is indeed remarkable. 
True, the unbelievers give various reasons why they do 
not believe in God; but the wonder is, that they do not 
perceive the far weightier unanswerable reasons for ac- 
cepting the existence of God. That learned people fail 
to see the unreasonableness of the denial of God is 
clearly due to satanic influences, the devil having “blind- 
ed the minds of them which believe not.” It is a sort 
of miracle of Satan, and not a small miracle at that. 
The Gospel of salvation through the blood of Christ 


is to unregenerate, worldly-minded humanity, as well as © 


to an apostate church, a foolish, despisable thing. Mod- 
ern theology men have referred to it as “pestilential” 
teaching. Not a few well-known liberalistic theologians 
have only scoffing and ridicule for it. “For the preach- 


ing of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; 


but unto us who are saved it 1s the power of God. We 
preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumblingblock, 
and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which 
are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of 
God and the wisdom of God.’ (I Cor. 1:18, 23, 24). 


o—- ‘ 1 P > 
ST ee ee ee ee ee ee 


CHRISTIANITY EXPLAINED AWAY 305 


Is it not an appalling fact that there are in our day 
men, supposed to be ministers of the Gospel, who openly 
declare that the crucified Christ, as the Apostles preach- 
ed Him —or, in other words, the message of salvation 
through the Blood —is to them as well as to their con- 
gregations a stumblingblock and an offense? But to us 
who are saved, says the Apostle, He is “the power of 
God and the wisdom of God.” Now here is clear evi- 
dence of.the fundamental contrast between the non-be- 
liever and.the believer. What the one considers fool- 
ishness the other finds to. be the power of God. To him 
who has accepted the Gospel. message and is experiencing 
its power in his own. life there is nothing so vital, noth- 
ing so satisfying, nothing. to. make his heart burn within 
him, as the.sweet story of the Gospel, the message that 
Christ gave His life for us, “the just for the unjust that 
He might bring us to,God” (I Pet..3:18).. On the other 
hand, the preaching. ofa modernized gospel i is.indeed an 
‘ offense. _ You cannot blame. those who. say they. find it 
an uninteresting, lifeless thing. It is a form of the Gos- 
_ pel minus the power thereof. 

The fact must not be overlooked that religion is po- 
~litely bowed out of existence by modern “religious” lib- 
-eralism. Religious psychology, as. now taught in our 
leading seminaries, undertakes to give a biological ex- 
planation of religion. It denies that there is a special 
religious instinct. Religion, including Christianity, is 
reduced to a psychological formula, which means, in 
plain English, that it is explained away. The case is 
similar to that of a certain naturalistic scientist search- 
ing the heavens with his telescopes and declaring that 
he did not find God. Considered from this viewpoint 
there is no vital difference between Christianity and 
other religions. .Even natural religion, such as every 
person is supposed to have, though he may not hold ta 
any religion, is held to be identical with “the essential 


306 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


religion of the spirit.” All this means clearly that, ac- 
cording to modern theology, religion cannot be a mat- 
ter of so great importance as has been supposed. 
Though it is obviously true that there is no vital differ- 
ence between religious liberalism and paganism, we 
must insist that the Christianity of Christ and the apos- 
tles is of another character. There are the most funda- 
mental differences between the old-fashioned Christian- 
ity and natural religion (such as you had before your 
conversion) or pagan religion. Unless this be a fact, it 
were folly to propagate the Christian faith. In that case 
our missionaries would have no better message than 
that of the social gospel which reduces Christianity to 
a scheme for social improvement. | 

Our faith is “the victory that overcometh the world.” 
True, there are those who in theory believe in the Scrip- 
tures giving assent to the Christian faith, but have nev- 
er personally appropriated the truth of Christianity to 
themselves nor made it a part of their own lives. Hence 
they do not have a real conviction of the truth, not the 
faith that overcometh the world. If they profess the 
Christian faith, they have not permitted the truth of the 
Gospel to become the determining factor in their own 
lives. They do not dedicate themselves to the service 
of God and of their fellows as followers of Jesus Christ. 
They find it too onorous a task to regulate their lives 
according to the Scripture requirements and to bear 
the reproach of Christ. They may profess an “other- 
worldly” faith but in fact are enwrapped in this present 
world, its treasures and pleasures. Yet, though it is 
quite true that salvation is of faith by grace, it is just as 
true that faith is not without its fruits and the Scrip- 
tures state clearly what these fruits are. Dead faith is 
not true faith. “Dead orthodoxy” does not deserve the 
name of orthodoxy. Worldliness and mere pretense are, 
like modern liberalism, deadly foes to true Christianity. 


i i te Ne 





GREATEST ENEMIES OF CHRIST 307 


Both prophecy and recent history are pointing to 
the fact that the end of the present dispensation will 
bear a striking resemblance to the earliest Christian 
period. Our Lord and His followers were “despised and 
rejected of men”; the great and mighty of the world 
deemed them beneath their notice or heaped infamy on 
their heads. Did not the Sanhedrin condemn Christ to 
death on the charge of blasphemy? Did not some of the 
philosophers of Athens refer to the apostle Paul as a 
“babbler.” Yet after nearly three centuries of expan- 
sion the Christian Church began to grow cold and 
woridly. The rulers of the world, the worldly philoso- 
phers began to favor it. The church had a great out- 
ward growth. In the course of history Christianity was 
in many countries made the religion of the state. Every 
person was compelled by law to be a member of the 
state church. A large part of the world was apparently 
Christianized. But the supposed Christian religion of 
the masses and of the great of this world was a super- 
ficial thing. 

Now in our time we see the world throwing off its 
Christian cloak. Modern liberalism, though it has re- 
tained the Christian name, does not claim to represent 
Christianity as the apostles preached it. Once more, as 
in the days of the apostles, Christianity is despised and 
rejected by the leaders of thought. And mark well, the 
greatest enemies of the crucified Christ and of apostolic 
Christianity are men who hold some of the most respon- 
sible positions in the church, just as in that early day 
the most formidable foes of our Lord were the ecclesi- 
astical leaders in the religious body of which He Him- 
self was a member by birth. As modern liberalists in 
high stations openly reject the doctrines of the deity of 
Christ and the atonement through the Blood, just so the 
ecclesiastical dignitaries of that period condemned Him 
to death because, said they, “he made himself the Son 


308 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


of God” (John 19:7). And as in that period the masses 
followed their ecclesiastical dignitaries rather than “the 
carpenter of Nazareth,’ the fishermen of Galilee, and 
the tent-maker of Tarsus, so the masses of our time will 
not accept the leadership of those who follow the foot- 
steps of Christ and the apostles. In a word, the world 
and the apostate church are openly despising the old 
Bible faith. And those who stand for the faith will not 
fare better at their hands than did Christ and the apos- 
tles at the hands of the high priests and scribes. The 
days are again upon us when to bear “the reproach of 
Christ” means something similar to what it did in tee 
primitive Christian period. 


The Apostle Paul refers repeatedly to: the fact dul 
the Gospel, as he preached it, was, in the eyes of the an- 
‘cient unbelieving world, foolishness—“‘anti-intelligence,” 
to use a modern term. Now this is precisely the charge 
“advanced by modern liberalism against those who stand 
for the old Gospel. For example, Dean: Shailer Math- 
ews says: “Over against intelligence in religion [speak- 
ing of religion as represented by modern liberalism] is 
being organized anti-intelligence” meaning evangelical 
conservatism to which Dean Mathews refers in the same 
instance as “obscurant and reactionary religion.”* The 
attitude taken by modern religious liberalism to those 
‘who represent the old Bible faith is similar to that of 
the unbelievers in all ages of history. The fact is that 
between the full-fledged religious liberalism and free 
thought, or unbelief, there is just this difference that 
the one claims the predicate “religious” while the other 
does not. What the representatives of religious liber: 
alism mean when they speak of non-doctrinal, non-cred: 
al, ethical religion, is the same thing for which the 


4 The Biblical World, November, 1920, p. 554. 


ae ee | ee ee 





NAME OF RELIGION RETAINED 309 


freethinkers stand, though they do not pretend to be 
religious. 

This means, as has been pointed out elsewhere, that 
the modern religion, as defended by its leading represent: 
atives in contradistinction to pronounced free thought, 
is a trifling thing, a shibboleth. An illustration to the 
point is found in the confession of a noted liberalist, 
Professor Roy Wood Sellars, who “for years felt that it 
- would be better to give up the word religion entirely,” 
but finally decided to retain it and unite with the Uni- 
tarians.© Though an outspoken atheist, as his writings 
indicate, he is a prominent member of the Unitarian 
Church. He, as well as the leading professors in the 
liberalistic seminaries, is a representative of the modern 
non-doctrinal, ethical “religion.” Now we are told that 
this class of religionists the agnostics and the pro- 
nounced atheists — stand for “intelligence” against the 
supposed anti-intelligence of those who are loyal to the 
faith of the apostles. Mark well, despite the word-jug- 
glery, camouflage and counterfeiting of religious liberal- 
ism, conservatives are accused of obscurantism. They 
can say, with the Apostle Paul: “We are fools for Christ’s 
sake’ —in the eyes of the modern deniers of the funda- 
mentals of the faith. 

That the denial of the fundamentals within the 
church necessarily means disaster is not open to argu- 
ment. Liberalism rejects the supernatural character of 
Christianity. Natural religion alone is to find favor. 
It is, by way of illustration, as if that which our Lord 
has planted—the grapevines— should be suppressed, 
and that which naturally grows—the briars, burdock, 
milkweed and their ilk— be permitted to take posses- 
sion of the vineyard in the hope that ultimately the fruit 
will surpass that of the grapevines. Every one knows 


5 Compare p. 261 of the present book. 


310 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


what will happen if that which nature is planting in the 
vineyard be given the right of way. The grapevine has 
no chance where that which grows naturally iis tolerated. 
Both in morals and religion the good plants require cul- 
tivation, effort and care. A general toleration of all 
plants in the vineyard would be an absurd proposition. 
The editor of an American daily writes: 

No church can, without self-stultification, retain in its min- 
istry men who deny that which the Church deems indispensa- 
ble doctrine. The Church cannot, of course, order the mind 
of any man and make him believe that which he cannot be- 
lieve. And no honest man will teach what he is convinced is 
not true. It were better, then, that the ministers who find 
themselves out of accord with ancient doctrines go their own 
way in peace, leaving it to the established churches to pursue 
their important and highly valuable iabors in accordance with 
unalterable conviction.® 

Consider for a moment what would be the conse- 
quence if the liberalistic professors in the seminaries ad- 
vocated modern moral teachings, such for example as the 
exceedingly loose views in regard to the relation of the 
sexes which are now advanced by not a few learned and 
influential writers in Europe. If liberal ministers 
preached such views, the decline of morals would be ap- 
palling. But clearly the denial of the Christian funda- 
mentals by preachers is not a whit less disastrous to 
true religion than the advocacy of immorality. Is the 
church of Jesus Christ going to countenance that sort 
of thing? 

The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that 
compromise with the new theology means defeat. The 
thought that the cause of the old faith can be enhanced 
by a small measure of modernization is a delusion. No 
sooner have you discarded some point of the faith in fa- 
vor of a more liberal view, when you discover —if you 


6 The Gazette Times, Pittsburgh, Pa., December 18, 1923. 





CONSERVATIVES A MAJORITY 311 


are accustomed to doing your own thinking — that your 
position is unreasonable and untenable. “One thing is 
certain,” says Dr. Henry B. Smith, “that infidel science 
will rout everything except thorough-going Christian 
orthodoxy. All the flabby theories will go overboard. 
The fight will be between a stiff, thorough-going ortho- 
doxy and a stiff, thorough-going infidelity.”* A position 
of compromise is a losing position. It means that you 
virtually accept the liberal viewpoint. 

The great majority of the membership of the evan- 
gelical denominations in the United States and Canada 
is decidedly conservative. For this fact there is abun- 
dant testimony by various well informed writers. Pro- 
fessor Ozora S. Davis believes that fundamentalists, at 
a conservative estimate, number seventy-five per cent of 
all Protestants in the Far West and the Pacific Coast, 
fifty per cent in the South and Middle West, and at least 
twenty-five per cent in the East of the United States. 
Professor George W, Richards, a defender of modern- 
ism, has declared that three-fourths of all Protestants 
are conservatives. A Unitarian editor estimates that 
nine-tenths of all Protestants “believe in the infallible 
authority of the Bible.’* This means that as a rule the 
churches have it in their power to take a pronounced po- 
sition for the old Bible faith. Where this is not the case, 
or, in other words, where the liberals are a majority, 
those who stand for the faith once for all delivered to 
the saints find themselves, without question, face to face 








6 The Gazette Times, Pittsburgh, Pa., December 18, 1923. 

7 Apologetics, p. 194; quoted in The Princeton Theological Re- 
view, 1913, p. 502. 

8 The Christian Register, November 29, 1923. Compare The 
Monist, 1915, p. 46; The Reformed Church Review, 1918, p. 302; 
The American Journal of Theology, 1917, p. 349; The Biblical 
World, August, 1915, p. 95; the same, November, 1918, p. 288; 
The Christian Register, August 19, 1920, p. 807. 


349 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


with the duty to “come out from among them and be 
separate,’ as did the Cogregationalists of about a hun- 
dred years ago. It is impossible to suppose that, in the 
minds of those who are informed of the revolutionary 
character. of liberalism, there can be the least doubt as 
to the necessity of separation. The question is there- 
fore, Do the representatives of the old faith have the 
courage of their conviction? Are they made of the same 
stuff as were the apostles and martyrs? Are they going 
to take the position of loyalty to Christ, or are they 
willing, for the sake of a false peace, to recognize as a 
Christian church an institution that does not stand for 
the Christian truth? Is their faith genuine, or is it only 
sham and pretense? | 

The liberalists, needless to say, are not kindly dis- 
posed to the thought of leaving the evangelical church- 
es. The unbelieving men in the seminaries will not re- 
sign their positions of their own accord. Not a few lib- 
eralistic writers have advanced the opinion that the rep- 
resentatives of liberalism should stay in the churches, 
for the reason that they can do far more for the cause of 
liberalism if they are members of some evangelical 
church, than if they were without the church. A liberal 
Baptist writer in The Standard said: 

For a liberal leader to leave the Baptist denomination is to 
give aid and comfort to those reactionaries among us who seek 
to deny the Baptists’ sacred right to independent thought. — 
Thus the position of the liberal thinkers who remain among the 
Baptists is made more difficult, and the progress of liberal 
thought among our churches is greatly retarded. 

Of this there cannot be any doubt. Considered from 
their own viewpoint liberalists would, therefore, be ua- 
wise to leave the church so long as they are permitted 
to stay. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the 
old faith it is not only unwise but it is a glaring incon- 


sistency and an offence to permit men to plant “natural 


religion” in the vineyard of the Lord. And it is vain to 





MODERNIST FAILURE 313 


suppose that a church which retains an evangelical name, 
but is committed to the cause of liberalism, as are. 
the Unitarians, will ultimately fare better than the Uni- 
tarians. That the churches which openly stand for lib- 
eralism and do not pretend to be evangelical, are suffer- 
ing from anzmia and in consequence find themselves 
slowly dying, is an undeniable fact. It must be expect- 
ed that the liberalistic churches within evangelical de- 
_ nominations, if they freely renounce the evangelical 
name and faith, will share the fate of the Unitarians. 
The fact is that the Unitarians were originally Congre- 
gationalists who have renounced their creed and have 
become outspokenly liberalistic. If the liberal element 
in present-day Congregationalism would openly and un- 
mistakably espouse the cause of modernism, as do the 
Unitarians, there is every reason to believe that they 
would find themselves “in the same boat” with the Uni- 
tarians. 

This explains also why liberal preachers, as a rule, 
desire to remain within the evangelical churches. It is 
admittedly easier to serve an existing evangelical church 
and work in the interest of liberalism than to build up 
a church on a liberalistic foundation. We have else- 
where quoted Professor Edward Caldwell Moore’s ad- 
mission that “the true course is apparently to have re- 
ligion and then to liberalize it,” and that “it is seeming- 
ly futile to have liberalism and then seek to inject relig- 
ion into it.’ The common experience of liberal preach- 
ers who are not connected with evangelical denomina- 
tions is that, even if they can draw a crowd, they can- 
not hold it. Modernism can hide its inherent inefficiency 
with comparative ease so long as it is permitted to stay 
within an evangelical fold. .All this means that he who 
fails to recognize the need of separation is indirectly 
aiding the cause of liberalism. 

Furthermore there is every reason to believe that, 


314 MODERN RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM 


with the progress of the modern apostasy and the draw- 
ing nigh of the coming of the Lord, it will become more 
and more evident that a cold, formal, worldly type of 
Christianity, tuned to the spirit of the age, will not stand 
the test. It must be expected that for the undecided 
and faltering who do not mean to take an out-and-out 
position for the old Christian faith, it will become in- 
creasingly difficult to cast their lot with those who stand 
for the faith. Those who do not know from experience 
the blessed reality of the truth of the Gospel and of a 
life of prayer-fellowship with God will find themselves 
in danger of being swept away by the popular current 
of unbelief. 

The apostasy that is evident on every hand is an un- 
mistakable sign of the times. It should arouse believ- 
ing Christendom from its lethargy and listlessness to a 
realization of conditions as they are. In consequence of 
the apostasy the church finds itself today face to face 
with a crisis such as it has never passed through in its 
history. The need of the hour is men and women who 
from conviction stand for Christ and the truth, for “the 
faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” 
counting with Paul “all things but loss for the excel- 
lency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord” (Phil. 
3:8). The crisis is here. Are we, as loyal disciples of 
our Lord, ready to meet it squarely? Are we willing to 
unreservedly come out on His side, taking an out-and-out 
stand for Him? May our answer be that of Peter at a 
time when many went back and walked no more with 
Jesus, and the Master addressed to the disciples the ques- 
tion, “Will ye also go away?’ Then Simon Peter +an- 
swered Him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast 
the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure 
that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.’ 
(John 6:67-70). | 


Pa ee ee 





INDEX 


Abbott, Lyman, 10, 53, 100, 136 

Absolutes, non, in modernism, 46, 
51-55, 176, 225, 226, 240 

Ackerman, H. C., 24, 97 

Agnosticism, 27, 45, 239 

Agriculture, teaching, 133 

Altruism, 34 

America, 59, 180 

at Unitarian . Association 

Perego 195 °25./34; 35,72, 77. 
129, 147, 260 

Anarchy, religious, 210 

Anderson, K. C., 12, 82, 85, 113 

Andover Seminary, 285 

“Anti-intelligence,” 309 

Apostasy, modern, 17, 311, 312 

Aristotle, 49 

Arnold, M., 131 

Astrology, 261 

Athearn, W. S., 125, 231, 246 

Atheism, 38, 70-74, 145, 189, 223- 
228, 236, 243, 261, 302, 303 


~ Atonement, the, 25, 45, 57, 90, 


91-96, 268; moral influence the- 
ory of, 91-95 

Augustine, Church Father, 228 

Australia, 138 

Authority of Scripture, meaning 
of 24 


“Back to Nature,” 118, 125 

Bacon, L. W., 292 

Bade, W. F., 151 

Baptist Confessions, 202 

Basis sought for modernism, 46 

Bebel, August, 154 

Bergson, Henry, 49 

Berkowitz, H., 67 

Berry, J. F., 258 

Bible, English version of, 
value of, destroyed, 27 

Bible reading neglected, 25 

Bible Schools, 16, 252-256 


19; 


Binet-Sangle, 85 
Biologists, 236 
Bolsheviki, 295 

Bond of Unitarian Union, 82 
Books, immoral, 245 
Booth, General, 131 
Bornhausen, K., 21 
Boston, 293 

BoydjeJ. ti 13 

Bowden, E. J., 294 
Brahmo Somaj, 171 
Bridges, H. J., 259 
British Bible Society, 28 
Brooks, Phillips, 25 
Brown, W. A., 65, 227, 281 
Bryan ws: Teves P33 
Bryany WL4)221 
Bryant, 25 

Buckham, J. W., 52, 271 
Buddhists, 165, 176, 208 
Butler, Nathaniel, 230 


Calvin, John, 199, 228 

Calvinism, 227, 228 

Camouflage, theological, 17, 59, 
72, 74, 82, 255-267 


Campbell, R. J., 71, 81, 90, 116 


Canon, modern, 2 

Carver, T. N., 132, 280, 290 

Cases Si fo 54 

Channing, W. E., 286, 293 

Character, salvation by, 93 

Chapman, J. W., 180 

Chautauqua, 167 

Chicago Association of Baptist 
Ministers, 198 

Childhood, faith of, 231 

China, 180, 184 

Christianity redefined, 11 

Christie, F. A., 171, 289, 297, 299 

Christ, deity of, 21, 37, 56, 80-86 
His authority denied, 21 

Christian Science, 197 

Church discipline, 191-197 


316 


Church fathers, 30 

Church, modern idea of, 97-99; 
rights of, 194; sphere of, 142 

lark iy W., 56 

Clarke, James F., 291 

Clarke, Wm. N., 25, 27, 30, 60, 66, 
81, 101-103, 110-113, 265; dog- 
matism of, 107 

Coe, Geo. A., 146, 147, 159, 175 
212, 278 

Colleges, liberalism in, 16 

Community Church, 200 

Compromise unacceptable, 309 

Compton-Rickett, J., 250 

Comstock, Anthony, 245 

Confucianism, 14, 165, 176 

Confusion, religious, 35 

Conscience, liberty of, 191-210; 
modern type of, 194; modern 
view of, 118 

Consciousness, religious, 50 

Constantine, Emperor, 192 

Constitution of United States, 203 

one old and new theology, 
Sia 

Conway, Moncure D., 120, 218 

Conwell, Russell D., 235 

Cook, E. A., 86 

Cooke, G. W., 36 

ope,” B,D. 221 

Cope, H. F., 143, 150, 164 

Counterfeiting, theological, 
266 

Crane, Frank, 143, 221 

Cross, George, 53, 92, 187, 199 


255- 


Dance, immorality of, 122, 123 

Darwin, 25 

Davis, QO. S.,; 311 

Decline, moral, 119 

Definite teaching needed, 30 

Deism, 63 

“Democracy of God,” 147 

Democracy, religious, 138-144 

“Democratizing God,” 143 

Denial of fundamentals, 14 

Depravity, total, 89 

Departure, radical, from creeds of 
Christendom, 12 

Descartes, 49 

Despair, result of modernism, 28 

Moan Shen effects of liberalism, 


INDEX 





Devil-worshippers, 165 

Devotees, of India,. 38 
Dietrich, J. H., 70 

Dijkema, F., 283 

Dissenters, evangelical, 201 
Disunion, organized, 211 

Dixon, A. C.,, 

Doan, (Hes ir 

“Doctrine not essential,” 51-54, 309 
Dodson, G. R., 72, 73, 188, 243 
Dogma, rejection of, Si, 52 
Dogmatism, negative, 54, 220, 221 
Dole, C. F., 224 
Dotterer, R. H., 65, 66 
Doubting God’s Word, 39, 40 
Drake, Durant, 164, 168, 277 
Drews, Arthur, 90 
Drummond, W. H., 274 





- ‘ 2 " - = - rw < 
Ee ee ee ee A er ee a 


Barp, E44, eo 

Easy-going modern faith, 40, 42 

Edison, Thomas, 221 

Eliot, C. W., 164 

Eliot, 5 Oo 164, 208, 296 

Ellis, G. E,, 12, 292 

Emerson, R. W., 292 

Epictetus, 204 

Error, a mortal, 132 

Ethical Culture Societies, 34, 56, 
AIA AL4 CLTS 

Eucken Rudolf, 49 

Evolutionism, 118, ‘221-227 

Experience, religious, definitions 
of, 35; of spiritual realities, 42; 
not a substitute for Scripture 
authority, 47 


“Faith in faith itself,’ 52 

Falsehoods, historical, 198 

Fatherhood of God, 40, 91, 92, 
290 

Faulkner, J. A., 111, 244 

Faunce, W. H. P., 9, 276 

Federal Council of Churches, 163, 
180, 187-189 

Fenn, W. W., 40, 46, 90, 228, 
265, 286 

Fitch, A. P., 86, 144, 282 

Forsyth, P. F., 53 

Foster, G. B., 15, 25, 76, 77, 78, 
83, 103-109, 116, 198, 235, 240, 
267, 270, 279 

France, 196 


HA umanitarianism, 


INDEX 


Freedom, religious, 191-210 

Biter 210 
Freethinkers, 114, 115, 309 
Fundamentals denied, 14 


Garvie, A. E., 56, 64, 116, 228 

Gates, Errett, 11, 143 

George, Lloyd, 188 

Germany, 281 

Gilbert, G. H., 11 

Gillies, R., 180 

God, His fatherhood, 40, 91, 92, 
280 ; His nature, 62, 63; moder- 
nist conceptions of, 64, "70-72 


Goethe, 25, 246 
Gorky, Maxim, 138 
Gospel, modern, suaned nats? 295 


Gray, James M.. 254 
Great Britain, 180 
Greene, W. B., Jr., 181, 237 
Haas, J. A. W., 125, 221 
Heackel, sBernst: 70.» 
Hall, G. Stanley, 76, 212 . 
Hall, Winfield S 122 
Harper, W. R,, 161, 245 
mracrisw GS 254 
Harrison, Frederic, 131), 
Harvard College, 285 
Heathen not to be converted, 173 
Hedging, 263-265 . 


.. Heresy: trials, 200 


Higher criticism, 16; defined, 22 

Hill, Wm. B., 232: 

Hirsch, 85 Be 

Historians, 236 

_ Historico- critical method, 00 

‘Hobbs, W. H., 240, 

Hodge, C. W., & 

Hodgkin, H. Y. 148, 153, 161, 172 

Holmes, J. H., 55, 123, 145, 204, 
208 

Holmes, H. W., 166 

Hopelessness of modernism, 120 

Horr, G. E., 150 

Horton, R. F., 29 

Humanity, religion of, 173; wor- 
ship of, 79 

the new reli- 
gion, 47 

Huxley, 221 


Idolatry, modern, 78, 146 


317 

Immanence, divine, 62-76, 116, 117, 
218 

Immorality of camonflage, 255- 
269 

Immortality, 212-215 

Imperialism, 219 

Incarnation, modern views of, 81 

India, 28, 39, 171, 179 

Inefficiency of modernism, 276-283 

Inerrancy of Scripture, 18 

Ingersoll, R. G, 9,.10, 17, 243 

Inspiration, counterfeit, of, 24; 
modern theories of, 19, 205. doc- 
trine of needed, 29 © 

Intolerance, 150, 154 

_Inwood, Charles, 180 

Irreconcibable positions, two, 16 


Jacks, L. P., 270 


. Jaines, Wm., 25, 212. 


Japan, 171, 178-180 


Jesus, “modernized,” 84; ibecale: 
tic view of, , 463+ “a, bade ley 
genius,” 59 

Jews, 16, 35, 59, 60, 188, 208 

Johnson, G., a 

Jones, F. S., 


247 
Keller, A. 275 _ 
Kelly, H. A. 121 
Kepler, 25. : 


Kim, Y. Dr., “122 


Kirkland, Pres., 286 


Knox, John, 206 


- Koran, the 205 


Krauskopf, Ne bea 
Kurtz, D. W.;. 81, 86, a1 


Lake, Rveom 68 

Lamson, A., 286 

Laplace, 219 

Lawrance, I. L., 

Leinbach, P. S., 189. - 

Leuba, James H., 236-239 

Liberalism, devastating effects of, 
278; failure of, 40, 274, 281; 
inefficiency of, 276-303 7 

Liberals, a minority, 311; in evan- 
gelical churches, 297, 312 

Liberty, religious, 191-197, 198-211 

Locke, 25 

Loosten, de, 85 

Lordship of Christ, 153, 154 


162, 172 


318 


Lowell, 25 
Luther, 33, 199, 251 
Lynch, Frederick, 272 


Machen, J. H., 16, 30 

Macintosh, D. fon 85, 178, 276 

Meaterlinck, oo, 118 

MacCauley, C., 181 

Macfarland, C. S., 187 

Man, divinity of, 13 

Martineau, J., 257 

Martyrs, 98 

Marx, Karl, 135, 154, 155 

Masonic Order, 151 

Materialized religion, 97 

Mathews, Shailer, 9, 60, 156, 174 
184, 308 

McAfee, J. E., 149, 155, 157 

McConnell, F. J., 66, 67, 250 

McGiffert, A. C., 


255, 268 
McKeever, W. A., 69 
Message of the Bible, 41 
“Method alone essential,” 45, 
Miller, Dr., 172 
Ministry, the liberal, 242 
Miracles, 63, 66, denied, 22 
veramams Education Movement, 
1 


47 


Missions, opposed by liberals, 169; 
183, 


mission money misused: 
267; modern view of, 169-183 
Modernizing the faith, 303 


Mohammedanism, 14, 24, 35, 59, 


188 


Moody, D. L., 250 


Moore, E. C., 11, 76, 169, 178, 208, 


277 


Moral interpretation of religion, 


36, 38, 43, 113-119 
Moral truth only relative, 117 
More, Paul E., 238 
Morehouse, 249 
Morley, John, 130, 257 
Mott, John R., 183 
Mulert, Herman, 263 


Narrowness of liberalists, 107 


Naturalism, 216-228; religious, 67, 


68; spiritualized, 97 
Natural religion, 39 
Necromancy, 162 


14, 44, 55, 63, 
67, 68, 80, 143, 150, 189, 213, 219, 


INDEX 


Negation, new theology, 13. 

Nero, 156 

Neuman, H., 157, 258 

New England, 192, 202 

New theology inessential, 68; 
without a foundation, 45-47, 57 

Non-doctrinal religion, 52, 309 

Northrup, C., 14 


Obscurantism, modernist, 262, 308 

Old Testament Scriptures, 30 

Orr; Hi Ru 257 

Otherworldliness, 214 

Orthodoxy, the new, 11, 77, 260; 
“dead”, 96, 306 


Paganism, 24, 35, 38, 306, 

Pantheism, 117 

Park, C. E., 294 

Patten, S. N., 71 

Patton, F. L., 303 

Paul, apostle, 99, 131, 306 

Persecution, 154, 192-197 

Peter, apostle, 98 

Pfennigsdorf, E., 272 

Pharisees, 266 

Philosophy, 49, 67 

Physicists, 236 

Platner, J. W., 287 

Plato, 20, 49 

Poison, sugar-coated, 111 

Popery, modern, 67, 100, 103, 107, 
108 

Prayer, 62, 75-79; atheistic type of, 
78; strange definitions of, 76 

Proof-text method, 19 

Protective tariff, illustration, 17 

Protestantism, 192, 199, 206, 208, 
disintegration of, 299 

Psychologists, 236 

Psychology, religious, 39, 222, 305 


Radical departure from the faith, 
15, 16 

Randall, J. .H., 53, 71, 129; 173; 
186 

Rationalists, 35 

Reauschenbusch, W., 53, 55, 64, 91, 
92, 94, 114, 134, 135, 138,, 143, 
147, 212 

Reconstruction, personal, 127 

Reeman, E. H., 


Reese, C. W., 73 





INDEX 


Reformation, the, 192, 206, 208 

Reform Jews, 170 

Regeneration, 40 

Relativism, 51-55, 169, 226, 240; a 
sickening sense of, 46 

Religion, creedless, 296, definition 
of, 34; easy-going modern, 283; 
experiental, 39; explained a- 
way, 222, 306; materialistic con- 
ception of, 36; natural, 39; se- 

_ condhand, 158 

Religious education, 158-169 

Religious Education Associaton, 
162-171, 176 

Religious instinct denied, 36 

oe ate instruction abandoned, 
159 

Religiousness and blindness, 39 

Resurrection of Christ, 27 

Revelation, divine needed, 41; 
minimized, 55 

Revolt against doctrinal theology, 
11 


Revolution, religious, 9-17, 262, 


Richards, G. W., 311 

Ritschl, A., 36, 58-60, 90, 227, 255 
Rittelmeyer, F., 280 

Robins, Raymond, 138 

Roberts, Richard, 273 

Roberts, Th. M., 167 

Ross, G. A. J., 116 

Royce, J., 34, 64, 71 

Rural Life Movement, 131 
Russell, Bertrand, 79, 120 


Sabatier, A., 34, 199 

Sachs, Arthur, 54 

Salvation, conditions of, 93; mo- 
dern conception of, 15, 301; 
socially interpreted, 127-140, 301 

Sanhedrin, 307 

Santayana, G., 196, 278 

Satan, 187 

Savage, M. J., 27, 

Schaff, Philip, 252 

Schleiermacher, 58, 60 

Science, 216-222; not the basis for 
theology, 46 

Scripture, authority of, 44, 51; 
authority of, denied, 25; in- 
spiration of, 18; new theology 
view of, 101 


319 


Scudder, Doremus, 181 

Secondhand religion, 158 

Secret orders, 194 

Secularization of religion 116 

Self-destruction 214 

Sellars, R. W., 34, 36, 47, 72, 97, 
145, 186, 260, 309 

Seminaries, liberalism in, 16 

Sentimentalism, moral, 282 

Shakespeare, 24, 26 

Sherman, Stuart P., 118, 125 

Shibboleth, 107, 309 

Shipwreck of faith, 105, 232 

Shotwell, J. T., 12 

Simons, Minot, 163 

Sin defined 89; making light of 
90; modern views of, 116 

Sinlessness of Jesus denied, 87 

Sinful nature of man denied, 15 

Smith, G. B., 23, 25, 27, 45, 46, 
51, 70, 71, 114, 118, 129, 146, 
172, 174, 176, 233, 256, 277 

Smith, Goldwin, 110, 214, 219 

Smith, Henry B. 311 

Soares, Th. G., 76, 146 

Social gospel, 127-140 

Socialism, 55, 134, 135 

Social service, 41 

Societies, ethical culture, 43, 56 

Sociologists, 236 

Socrates, 204 

Soul, supposed evolution of, 36 

we Tan ak divine, denied, 140- 
154 | 

Sperry, W. L., 189 

Spencer, Herbert, 120, 131, 221 

Spiller, G., 114 

Spurgeon, C. H., 30, 190, 250 

Stall, Sylvanus, 121 

State churchism, 192, 201 

State, sphere of, 141 

Stephen, L., 49 

Straton, J. R., 126 

Strong, A. H., 68, 242, 247 

Substitutes for theology, 55 

Stuiccess, two views of, 98 

Sunday School Association, Inter- 
national, 161 

Supernatural denied, 64, 70, 261 

Superstition, accusation of, 12 


Taft, former President of U. S., 
184, 297 


320 


Tagore iy biiay 

Tennant, F. R., 83 

Tennyson, 25 

Testament,.the Old, 31 

Theater, corruption of, 123, 124 

Theism, said to be outgrown, 72 

Theological schools, conference of, 
LB6) 253): liberalism in, 16, 230- 
245 

Thermopylae of. Christendom, 30 

Tokugawa, Prince, 173 

Tokyo, 173 

Toleration, 140-156 

Transmigration of souls, 

Triumph, liberal, defeat, 13 

Troeltsch, 61 - 

Truth supposed to be relative, 46, 
51-55, 169, 226, 240; 
fended, 145 

Putts.) Joe, 2118 

_ Twofacedness, Ritchlian, 59 

Tyrrell, George, 250 . 


212 


Unbelievers, are » there any? 10 
Uncertainty, . agnoy of, 46 ~ 
Unequal yoke, 185 


Unitarian: attitude to’ missions, 


170; conference, western, 36; 

denial of. the faith, 52 
Lak eaueenin failure of, 284-299, 
Unitarian ministry, 298 
_Unitarians, 28, 43, 311 
Unionism, religious, 184-191 
Union of church and state, 141 
Uniting all religions, 188 


to be de. 


INDEX 


erage ae sce of modernism, 
255-267 
Geet religious, 35. 


Value-judgments, 227 

Van Dyke, H., 228 

Variations in Bible “manuscripts, 
19 

Vedder, H. C., 213 

Vichert, Joh 206, 207 

Virgin ‘birth of. Christ, 26 

Voodooism, 162 


Ward, Wm. H., 125 

Ware, Henry, 286 

Warfield, B. B., 83, 85 

Weakness of modern religious 
education, 165 

Wellhausen, 27. 

Wesley, John, 205 

Whittier, 25 

Wilcox, Ella W., 122 

Williams, Roger, 198, 204, 208, 209 

Wise, Rabbi, 123 

Word- jugglery, 24, 253-256 - 

World and church, 97-99 — 

World war, 270- 275 

Worship abandoned, 76, 145, 146; 
minimized, 77; “must be ‘relin- 
quished,” 70, 261 


Y. M. GC. A. 209 
Youtz, H. A. $2) /52) 143, 158, 165, 
224, 228, 268 


Zerbe,- A. S., 224, 237 
Zwingli, 206 


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